The Hamster Wheel

This morning, along my walk, I saw a person running on a treadmill indoors, in one of those new fancy glass apartment buildings, looking out towards the river and the trail. Why run on this treadmill when there is a beautiful trail, in nature, right outside the window?

I believe that we become accustomed to being indoors, in the comfortable air conditioning, under fluorescent lighting, and find pleasure within the cave. We become so accustomed to the hamster wheel, the everyday routine, the cycle, every single day. We love running in place, doing the same old thing, and not seeing results. Perhaps we truly are just like Sisyphus, who will never reach the top.

However, human beings are bipedal for a reason. We have two legs, we stand upright, because we are hunters and gatherers in nature. We are meant to be moving our physical bodies constantly throughout the day. It is no coincidence that this is the case; we have these legs, God gave them to us for a reason. But we deny this use of our legs in pursuit of pleasure, comfort, and luxury, inside, whether at home or at work. Most days are spent maximally indoors, for eight hours per day, sitting down, in front of a box, a computer, while being confined to a box.

Think of Wall-E, how the people on the spaceship are all being fattened up, weakened, controlled by robots, feeding them endless yummy food, sugar, soda, etc. While they watch a TV or computer right in front of their eyeballs. I believe this is how we spend the majority of our time now in cities, and it is quite alarming to me. The Earth is kind of like the spaceship, spiraling out into the unknown, into the void, rotating around this big ball, the sun, but we deny it. We would rather be in the cave, and not under the light, in the truth.

Become Unmovable

The strong will inherit the Earth, and the unmovable are free. If you are being led astray on a string, would you not try to cut it?

Maybe since we were little, and especially in public school, we’ve been programmed to sit down, shut up, and obey. We’ve been told to do our little tasks, memorize our information, crunch the numbers, listen to the alarm, and move onto the next one. We become slaves to the alarms, the bells, the phone, the email, and you even see people becoming anxious because of this. Do you ever see somebody get flustered when they receive an email? They get so upset about it, shrug their shoulders, or just become annoyed. This to me is the funniest nature of our use of technology today. We don’t even enjoy using it!

The new slaves are slaves to technology. The free men are outside, under the sun, moving their physical bodies.

Freedom is outside. If you enjoy life, and wake up in the morning without that frustrating feeling, and are eager to go outside, consider yourself blessed. For this world is becoming decadent, ugly, and we are denying our physical bodies because of our desire for comfort and pleasure.

So What Can We Do?

Don’t allow anybody to tell you what to do or what not to do. Become your own boss, and govern yourself. Free men are outside, and this is the number one privilege in life. The privilege is being physical, affirming your life, and embodying reality. The tragedy is a denial of the body, enslaved to the technology, while spending all day inside, surrounded by luxury and comfort.

Real life is on the battlefield, on the front lines of life. I’d rather die trying to become great, moving my body, doing something physical, than squander my potential climbing a corporate ladder, and being a slave.