"Making a Muscle"

 Usually before one is out of grade school, every boy learns "how to make a muscle," and delights in showing off that ability by raising and bending their arm to reveal one of the great observations and lessons of mastering their body.  Unfortunately, few take it beyond that revelation -- in realizing that the same effect could be demonstrated with every other muscle in their body.  

When a joint is articulated, the resulting movement produces an undeniable transformation of its appearance -- that remains throughout life, except that many never perform such movements (articulations) anymore -- and even lose the memory (connection) that such a thing is even possible anymore.  Yet when one gets them to perform such articulations, that contraction is obvious once more -- as long as they are still capable of such movement.  But that requires manifesting memory into action -- which many have long forgotten -- and is the underlying reason for their diminishing mobility.  

It's not that they can't move in that manner anymore, but they'v long forgotten how to activate such action.  They just don't think to do it anymore -- and that thinking of its possibility -- makes the activation of the neuromuscular structures their response capabilities.  That is the reason for practice -- to maintain and even enhance those capabilities, and obviously, not to, will make such actions increasingly difficult and eventually impossible.

That's obvious to mostly everyone -- but not so obvious, is the realization that such movement can be performed without a load usually employed to increase the level of difficulty -- characteristic of most "competitive" events.  However, that competitive component is not actually a requirement of maintenance and improvement -- but actually becomes a detriment and deterrent to lifelong health, long past the age in which one can compete without the risk of injuries producing a lifelong impairment.

That's usually at the point at which one's ability to recover fully from such injuries diminish greatly to the point that further participation on those terms, is no longer feasible nor attractive -- and one's better judgment says, "No more."  The risks far outweigh the rewards henceforth, and one is wise to give up on such activities (as every mature person has), rather than risk a fatal or lifelong debilitating injury -- unless of course, they absolutely have to.  Then a person does what they have to do -- and there is no quibbling over that.  Their very lives may depend upon it.

Most are not aware of the fact that healthful movement (exercise) can be conducted in the absolute absence of any competitive (stressful) motives -- and in fact, is the preferable and more productive way to conduct such activities.  That's particularly true for people hoping to maintain those faculties for the entirety of their years -- and especially true for those wishing to improve the ease, grace and effortless of their movements throughout life.  For that, no competition is required -- but the trained eye can detect that difference as the underlying functioning of that individual.

It doesn't have to be rocket science.  That should be self-evident truth -- and that may be the hardest thing to see and understand in a world of technocracy -- in which most things that are "known," are the knowledge claimed by those who claim to know about these things -- whether they in fact, know anything worth knowing.  Not all knowledge is equal; some are more useful than others.  Some have no validity in fact or practice -- but are propagated nevertheless.  Quite a number of things are that way.  Well-known and adhered to, but may be the root of the problem rather than its solution -- and it is only the solutions that matter, and not the multiplication and proliferation of endlessly more problems.

Real solutions eliminate those problems -- rather than simply making it bigger and more costly, so as to create endlessly more jobs (work).  Dependent care-giving is probably the greatest example of this at the present time -- when the paradigm is that it takes increasingly more caring by others, while that attention and caring by the individuals themselves, is greatly discouraged and even forbidden -- thus ensuring that evermore jobs will be created to solve that problem.  Besides the aging populations, that is also true of younger populations that have decided early on, to remain totally dependent on others for everything, rather than develop their own independence -- as the achievement of distinction of what every thriving and viable culture (society) seeks to do better than any other.

That is the survival of the fit -- and not merely the competition to be the fittest under much more arbitrary and constrained circumstances.  The former stands the test of time -- while the latter is sound and fury signifying nothing of lasting significance -- or great importance.  It is merely a simulation of life, rather than the actual living of it -- a game rather than life itself.  Some even go as far as to claim that all of life is nothing more than endless games -- so that in the end, nothing really matters -- rather than that reality always matters.

One's life should matter -- and should be the best one can make it, but those things just don't happen.  The quest of life is to make it happen.  Many get distracted from that truth -- by all the games, diversions and distractions.  The smartphone is not reality; the world around one is reality -- and where one can make every difference.  The image is not the real -- no matter who approved that message.