body combat

Wednesday, 3 August 2005 T: 21 56

‘Body Combat’ has certainly been a ‘blast’ within ACJC. The amount of horror and disgust it has compounded into the facial expressions of many is not at all difficult to imagine. Despite its name, it’s probably aerobics with the accompaniment of more modern songs using sets of exercises consisting of different moves from various types of Martial Arts. At least, this is basically what it claims to be. For me, my initial interest was entirely devastated after going through the first five minutes of the lesson. Instead of learning the techniques of fighting, I actually ended up doing things I wouldn’t exactly call gay. Only worse, I dare say. The following two weeks continue to build up hatred and apathy, not only in me, I would say.

Amusingly, these same upset and dread was dispelled after a rather refreshing lecture by a teacher. He’s right in a way, perhaps only echoing the same lesson thousands of people have told me. It’s all about the attitude. The amount of enjoyment or detest is totally dependent on the perspective. I re-visited the hours of exercises I have declared to be lame and horrible (gay), only to realise that teachers perhaps two to three times my age are doing the same thing. And certainly, I would say, they have surely a higher reputation and pride at stake than mere seventeen years old who seems to spend their entire time worrying what they look like to others, succumbing to peer pressure and influence. Look at them! Their usual seriousness and joylessness seem to dissolve to form delight and zeal. Why? Today, I find myself learning a very important fact of life.

I have lived half my teenage life probably trying to be someone I never am – a man. I am instead a boy. (in case you find yourself jumping to conclusions!) I have clothed myself in costumes I assume to be a result of maturity, spending half my time differentially ‘manly’ actions from ‘boyish’ with, ironically, childishness and naiveness. As one grows old, more mature, he or she with their dignity to protect will instead wish to revert back to the times of the past, and crazy activities like Body Combat seems to allow them to lose some of their inhibitions. My childish opinion is simply that people who do things I would classify as mature did them because of duty and responsibility and definitely not as a want resulting from their seniority. I was obviously wrong.

There today I find myself letting myself loose, wild in the exercise of Body Combat. Do I detest it? Am I disgusted? Somehow, in the midst of clowning myself, making a fool of myself, exhaustion, lameness, ‘gayness’, I find myself instead enjoying something what teachers have taken time to plan and implement… This is then the effect of age!

One last thing to add… In all schools, up to pre-tertiary levels, teachers/organisers often find difficulties planning activities and getting their students to co-operate. It seems that what they enjoy, what they deem as healthy and interesting often clashes the ideologies stuck in the minds of teenagers. Looking back, I would say that those teenagers are just too caught up in their childishness. When they grow up, they will look back at their teenage life, and somehow they will remember, and then they will miss them. And if in those years they had been blind to usefulness of the carefully organised activates due to their own immaturity, I think they will come to regret it.

No more formal attires from now on, unless during formal occasions when I’m compelled to wear them… Casual wear will do… And if friends laugh at me? oh so be it!