A THOUSAND WORDS: Flying High

This somewhat pessimistic doctrine rang all too true as we trod through the winter darkness, sucked down by mud, sleet and flooded sneakers, burdened with midterms, lack of sleep and global environmental disaster. Still, there is no need to despair. Take a closer look at your fellow students and you will see that there are many ways of liberating yourself from gravity's pull to take off for an instant. A good way of breaking the stress of monotonous everyday life is to take time out and furiously shake up your whole body. Different people do this in different ways. Some just find a solitary spot and jump up and down and scream for a few minutes. Others squeeze together on a crowded dance floor and rave all night, jumping up and down to loud music until their bodies are exhausted and aching. The joy in this lies at the mere thought of ever sitting down again. A whole youth culture -- skateboarding -- is based on the exhilarating joy of never having your feet planted firmly on the ground. For some people, to "stand in the place where you are" is just not exciting enough. Almost all sports are really all about tossing your body around in uncontrolled flapping of limbs, in a fruitless search for the secret formula that will enable us to fly, just like birds. The cheerleaders are really just trying to fly even higher than the players they claim to root for, using raw muscle power in what seems to be attempts to fling each other into orbits around the Earth. The most extreme people do not even rely on human muscle power to give them that excitement -- they climb high towers and jump off with rubber bands around their ankles to maximize that joy of free falling. The ranks of the bungee jumpers are still growing. If you do not find yourself in any of the above categories and find yourself tired and depressed, now you know why. Take an hour off from studying, get your system going, make the world spin before your eyes. Leap and be happy. Experience the joy of movement. Fly high. Peace.