As I was jogging past a moderately young male of about
twenty-five on my usual route to school we exchanged a brief moment of
eye-connection. Immediately after this act of intimacy he glanced down, noticed
my shoes, and then smirked. I was wearing my five-fingers: a type of shoe that
envelops your foot like a glove with five toe-sockets. There was no friendly
gesture, no attempt at any pleasant interaction, just a smirk. Those types of
smirks one gives to a socially-inferior person who is wearing something outside
the cultural norm. All I thought as I strode past was: “well, if that’s the
barrier you’re choosing to shelter behind, so be it.”
Besides that inconsequential exchange, this route was
gorgeous, even mesmerizing at certain points. The trail I was on continued alongside
a river with an abundance of over-hanging trees extending upwards of twenty to
fourty meters. There was a path on each side of the river; each path was
shrouded by those over-hanging trees. The season was late-spring so all the
trees were bustling with green and glimmering under the embrace of the
benevolent and warm sun. A beautiful day to be culturally-ridiculed while
running to school.
Small and inconvenient exchanges, regardless of how small,
find a way to unremittingly linger. Just as I was beginning to dwell on that a
small pair of squirrels came darting out from the forest to my left and seized
with fright once they noticed me. They paused for a whole three seconds,
staring at me as if I were a bi-pedal menace on the hunt. As I got nearer they
sprinted back from where they came. Hopefully their encounter with me doesn’t
cause them to return where they were running from and endanger themselves, I
thought as I continued along the path. Or perhaps I am the danger, I
momentarily considered. All the while
the birds above me were serenading my travels and the river beside me was
flowing in the same direction as I was, a wondrous juxtapose of life.
The trail was fairly close to neighborhoods, with families
out on their morning stroll with the baby-stroller. Dog-walkers with their
pups, occasionally with groups of pups; all friendly and all awaiting a good
ear scratch. In the distance, cars were honking and emitting foul odors on
their morning commute. It was moments as these where I began to reflect on the
expansive evolutionary history of my species, the bi-pedal endurance ape,
clever and robust. A slender anatomical structure, an erect spine, how
remarkably engineered for running, yet trapped inside metal boxes on wheels and
cubicles. How emotionally distorted we’ve become, gulping pharmaceuticals to
numb the symptom and forget the cause. How dependent on stimulants we’ve become
just to muster the energy to walk, think and act human. And how easily it was
corrected through engaging in our intrinsic-activities; the most fundamental of
which being the stride: running and walking.
I felt a deep sorrow at that moment for those who have never
danced, never loved, never ran, and never hollered as an ape does. For those
who are constrained by culture and numbed by chemicals, for those who are now
so obese it’s uncomfortable to walk and for those so emotionally-sheltered they
refrain from expression. It’s at this moment that I discover the adamant
craving to help, to save people from themselves and from their misconceptions.
But when I try I’m greeted by a smirk. I try to exemplify the human in its
purest form: barefoot, running with an erect posture while smiling and I’m met
with ridicule. If not that then when I’m commuting on my bike cars are
vehemently honking at me and emitting their exhaust directly into my lungs.
It’s like a swarm of locusts that could so easily be
re-converted into grasshoppers, yet their hunger and ignorance keeps them
reluctant. The grasshopper only transmogrifies into a locust out of
desperation, but where is the desperation?
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