The Forgotten World

The Forgotten World

Had a good jogging session this morning at the park, which had the effect of making me feel physically exhausted but mentally refreshed. A fresh mind is clearly needed to tackle all the nitty-gritty activities of the coming week.

When you are jogging outdoors, you are constantly focussing on your movement (one step at a time) and your relationship with the environment. You have to watch out for passing traffic, rocks and pebbles on your path, drains and potholes, dog poo and other urban hazards. It demands concentration but it clears your mind from the usual mental noise that runs incessantly in one's head.

The neighbourhood park beside the mosque is the nearest oasis of green for me here. But it is good enough. There are workout stations to do sit-ups, press-ups and other simple exercises. It serves as an outdoor gym for me to get a quick (and cheap) workout to kick-off my day.

I love doing physical exercises outdoors. It's not only the exercise, it's the trees, grass, sky and the morning sunlight which makes it all a very invigorating experience. You feel you are communing with Nature and Nature has so much to share with you. Even a brief hour cavorting on a small patch of an suburban park is a much welcome respite from the humdrum existence that is our everyday city life.

Whenever I see bright sunlight and blue skies, beautiful thoughts stream into my mind. Sometimes you feel a bit sad thinking how artificial our lives have become: we spend the greater part of our work-day staring into a computer screen and cooped up like caged animals in air-conditioned buildings. At the end of the day, we relax by again staring into another screen--the television.

But this is the life that we, so-called civilized men, have chosen. And we call it progress and prosperity. I suppose it is inevitable. We will spend greater and greater portions of our lives living in virtual worlds. Someday we'll create trees, leaves and sunlight in these worlds that will feel, smell and taste as real as the real thing, if not better.

And we'll probably need a Chosen One to wake us up one day and show us that there's a real world out there that has always been in existence. But somehow we have all forgotten about it.