Last night my mid-life crisis racing car red couch broke.
I’m not going to go into details. A leg gave way.
I love this couch. It represents a breaking away and a new
start and it has served me well since 2007. That’s not to say its time has come
because it is now somewhat lame. I’m just acknowledging its goodness. Although,
it is just a couch. And, as I was reminded, everything can be fixed.
This is becoming a theme, this idea that I don’t need to
catastrophise, as is my wont, and that there is a calmer way of acceptance and
solution and moving on.
Imagine that.
I recently heard a definition of parkour that took my fancy.
Parkour is that crazy movement which quite often gets mashed up with free
running. You may have seen it in such films as District B13 and Casino
Royale. It’s all that running up sides of walls and scaffolding and
jumping from building to building with seeming fluid ease in order to get away
or escape danger.
According to the strictest definition, parkour is the
act of moving from point “a” to point “b” using the obstacles in your path to
increase your efficiency.
It’s has a lot to do with thinking
positively, with the idea that practitioners of freerunning will sometimes
fall—largely because they think they might. If they keep propelling themselves
forward, using their environment and the aforementioned obstacles as
assistance, they will succeed.
For me, it’s about perspective. The way
we, or let’s not beat about the bush, I see obstacles or situations that arise
and how I then deal with them. I can stand on one spot and allow my mind to
race away on it’s own less than sweet path until my head explodes. Which hasn’t
really ever proved helpful as far back as I can remember.
Or.
I can identify the feelings, appreciate
the moment, Parisian shrug it and move forward, sliding that particular lesson
into my little Crumpler shoulder bag of life experiences and acknowledging the
strength it gives me.
