We Need to Move, Run, Walk, and Lift Things
“I sing the body electric. . .”
wrote Walt Whitman.
A high school basketball player. He takes three steps and leaps in the air for a layup. He makes it and returns to earth, his shoes slapping the hardwood floor. He is unaware that he is all grace, muscle, and heart, with the delicate touch of his fingers sending the ball on a perfect arc.
I sing the body electric.
I watched two swimmers at a community pool. They were training for a meet. The two girls cut through the water with minimum wake, as if they lived in water, as if they were born to swim. Effortless, with ease, each stroke pulling them through, as Whitman wrote, “the transparent green-shine.” They were competitive athletes, unaware of their beauty as they counted laps, turned at the end of the pool, pushed off with the power in their legs, and sailed again to the surface.
The body electric.
The cross-country runners. Early in the morning, their breath fogged the air, their muscles warming up as they headed up the road. I stop what I’m doing and watch. As they pass, I see one or two who run with suppleness, their stride long, barely touching the earth, bounding, relaxed, rhythmic. Their beings seem to whisper, “I could run forever.”
Their bodies sing.
The dancer. She leaps, spins, goes on pointe, is ethereal yet of the earth. She can make flying seem possible, yet when she stands still, the world is stilled with her.
The volleyball player jumps to spike a ball, the soccer midfielder on the run, making a perfect pass that splits two defenders, the wide receiver arching in the air, and, with fingertips, pulls in a pass. The disabled skier carves through powder, leaning hard into each turn. In less than a split second, a batter judges the speed and trajectory of a baseball, in a feat of evolutionary gifted skill, strikes the ball perfectly. The young golfer sends the ball flying 200 yards.
In these moments, they flow. They are un-self-conscious of how they move, float, leap, dive and run.
Athletes.
Once you step back from the competition and watch the athletes, it is watching art. It’s watching the essence of what it is to be human. Michelangelo allegedly said about creating David from a block of marble, “I simply carved away everything that wasn’t David.”
The athlete is that, stripped and “carved away” of everything non-essential, done by sweat and discipline, desire and work.
The end result is the Body Electric.
Ah, the question then is, as we watch, are we too athletes? Are we too of health, of the desire, regardless of age, gender, or disability, to find the athlete within?
The answer is yes, a resounding yes. It lies in our genes, the gift from eons of the animals that preceded us as humans and then as “us,” as Homo Sapiens. For millennia upon millennia, we ran, chased, leaped, climbed, lifted what needed to be lifted, and threw with the accuracy of that baseball pitcher. Sapiens means “thinking, or wise,” yet our survival on this planet, over millions of years, is as much a function of our athleticism as it is our ability to think.
Our lungs evolved, and our hearts, arteries, muscles, and tendons are there so that we can move, swim, run, and lift.
I watched an older man, in his seventies, at a local gym. Wearing a tan sweater, jeans, and running shoes, he was walking on a treadmill. He was focused and purposeful. His stride was long, and his arms swung by his side. His head was erect, eyes looking forward. He was not someone you’d say, “Ah, there is an athlete.” Yet it was in him, the ancient desire to move, to feel the pulse rise and the body heat.
I don’t think I would be out of line to muse that our first-world existential distress is largely caused by us drifting far from our evolutionary roots. As a tiger in a zoo paces in her enclosure, we “sit” and fight off depression and anxiety (and compress our hamstrings!). The tiger evolved to run and hunt. We evolved to move. We were hunter-gatherers for most of our existence. We chased game and foraged in fields. What price do we pay for being sedentary?
So I say: Move! Walk, run, swim, lift weights. Close the gap between who we are meant to be and what we have become.
In ”On The Loose” (a personal bible), Terry and Renny Russell wrote, “At least if the species has lost its animal strength its individuals can have the fun of finding it again.”
We are born athletes. It is our birthright. If it seems lost, we can find it again. It may be hard, daunting, but we are here to do hard things. We can choose the body electric:
Move.
