LJ Idol Season 8: Week 9; Counterintuitive.
My baby brother wants to be a stuntman in the movies.
William is 17 years old. He's preparing to enter his senior year of high school, looking into potential careers. The kid is smart. I don't doubt he’d make an excellent engineer (the field my ex pushed on him). He has contemplated going into any number of fields growing up, everything from a video game designer to a professional chef.
But his heart is in free-running. I won’t pretend as if I know anything about the sport; I don’t. I only know that about two years ago, he started speaking to me about something called parkour and he would randomly do hand stands in my sister’s living room. I thought it was cute back then, and I was happy that he actually chose to pursue something other than video games. I knew it would be good for him, little did I know just how good it would be for him.
Free-running and parkour are his passion. My family never put him through any gymnastics training or karate classes, but had a few buddies who did flips for fun and they taught him. He started teaching himself new stunts from YouTube videos. And he practiced every single day. He would fall and get right back up to try it again. And again. And again. He just wouldn’t stop until he got it right.
He is dang good at it too. Don’t just take my word for it, see for yourself. Keep in mind that he’s completely self taught and has never had any professional training whatsoever.
(For the visually impaired: Video features my brother flipping and practicing stunts such as climbing walls, jumping from roofs, etc. He videos himself in our hometown, down a few streets, in a field next to the Wal-Mart (the only non-supercenter I know) and in the grocery store parking lot, among other places since parkour is about using your surroundings in your stunts.)
My mom tells him to pursue a college degree first, then he can go after his dream. Wise words. Take the logical path, the one that should lead to financial success first. Then when you get time, work on your dream and maybe something will become of it. That’s the story most of us here while growing up. Be practical, play it safe. Choose the most logical path to success.
My mom almost flipped (no pun intended) when I told my brother that perhaps he should take a few years off before college to try his dream out. Of course, I told him to be practical with it. We would set out a plan for him and make sure he wasn’t starving while pursuing his dream. I think it is possible to pursue it while not screwing his life over completely in the process. He just needs to be smart about it, and I think with the proper support, he will be.
The reason I care so much? I know from experience that the logical path doesn’t always lead to success, let alone happiness as we’re taught to believe. I listened to that advice, and gave up my dreams several times over. Someone was always there to tell me why it was wrong, why I needed to find a nice career in the financial sector, or maybe real estate. I changed my majors like I changed underwear. Every time I did so, I did it under the advice of someone who I figured knew more than I did about what worked and what didn’t.
Defeated, I finally settled on a business degree. I figured it would get me out of college and into a real job. I lost sight of what I wanted to do with my life, and started thinking about what others said I should do with my life. It made sense at the time. I could graduate with useful skills, and somewhere along the line find a way back to my dream.
Here I am today with a masters degree, another useless piece of paper that seems to hinder my dreams more than help them. Real Estate Development. Me? Really? Who is this person, I wonder. How did I get so sucked into the hype, and get this far in debt for something that doesn’t fit me at all? No one ever told me that a “real” job would be so time consuming, leaving little time for outside endeavors. Eventually, I just decided to suck it up and give into what the world expected of me. I live to work instead of work to live, and I am miserable because of it.
So yes, I believe my brother should aim for the sky. He’s a smart kid. Not to mention, the WFPF (the World Federation of Parkour and Freerunning) has noticed him already. His best friend travels the country doing shows for Red Bull. My brother has joined him before and caught the attention of recruiters. There are scholarships out there that would send him to school for his craft. A stunt school may not seem like the most obvious choice for college, but it’s what he does well. And more importantly, it’s what makes him happy.
Here's another video shot after only two years of practicing.
I see what he can do without any training whatsoever, through only his determination alone. With the proper training, the best of the best teaching him, I can only imagine how far he could go.
He may only be 17 years old, but he's such an inspiration to me. Any time I want to say "I can't do it", my brother comes to mind. He has shown me that you can do so much with hard work and dedication, there really is nothing holding me back but my own fears. Life is both too short and too long to be stuck doing something you hate, always wondering “What if...?” and regretting not taking the chance to see if maybe you really had what it took all along.
If I'd known this when I was his age, who knows where I might be today. A veterinarian? A zoologist? Or maybe a famous movie star? I will never know, and that’s not something I want my baby brother to ever have to experience. I will do everything I can to help this happen. If he fails to make this his career, at least he will know he had tried. That’s more than I can say for myself.
William is 17 years old. He's preparing to enter his senior year of high school, looking into potential careers. The kid is smart. I don't doubt he’d make an excellent engineer (the field my ex pushed on him). He has contemplated going into any number of fields growing up, everything from a video game designer to a professional chef.
But his heart is in free-running. I won’t pretend as if I know anything about the sport; I don’t. I only know that about two years ago, he started speaking to me about something called parkour and he would randomly do hand stands in my sister’s living room. I thought it was cute back then, and I was happy that he actually chose to pursue something other than video games. I knew it would be good for him, little did I know just how good it would be for him.
Free-running and parkour are his passion. My family never put him through any gymnastics training or karate classes, but had a few buddies who did flips for fun and they taught him. He started teaching himself new stunts from YouTube videos. And he practiced every single day. He would fall and get right back up to try it again. And again. And again. He just wouldn’t stop until he got it right.
He is dang good at it too. Don’t just take my word for it, see for yourself. Keep in mind that he’s completely self taught and has never had any professional training whatsoever.
Click to view(For the visually impaired: Video features my brother flipping and practicing stunts such as climbing walls, jumping from roofs, etc. He videos himself in our hometown, down a few streets, in a field next to the Wal-Mart (the only non-supercenter I know) and in the grocery store parking lot, among other places since parkour is about using your surroundings in your stunts.)
My mom tells him to pursue a college degree first, then he can go after his dream. Wise words. Take the logical path, the one that should lead to financial success first. Then when you get time, work on your dream and maybe something will become of it. That’s the story most of us here while growing up. Be practical, play it safe. Choose the most logical path to success.
My mom almost flipped (no pun intended) when I told my brother that perhaps he should take a few years off before college to try his dream out. Of course, I told him to be practical with it. We would set out a plan for him and make sure he wasn’t starving while pursuing his dream. I think it is possible to pursue it while not screwing his life over completely in the process. He just needs to be smart about it, and I think with the proper support, he will be.
The reason I care so much? I know from experience that the logical path doesn’t always lead to success, let alone happiness as we’re taught to believe. I listened to that advice, and gave up my dreams several times over. Someone was always there to tell me why it was wrong, why I needed to find a nice career in the financial sector, or maybe real estate. I changed my majors like I changed underwear. Every time I did so, I did it under the advice of someone who I figured knew more than I did about what worked and what didn’t.
Defeated, I finally settled on a business degree. I figured it would get me out of college and into a real job. I lost sight of what I wanted to do with my life, and started thinking about what others said I should do with my life. It made sense at the time. I could graduate with useful skills, and somewhere along the line find a way back to my dream.
Here I am today with a masters degree, another useless piece of paper that seems to hinder my dreams more than help them. Real Estate Development. Me? Really? Who is this person, I wonder. How did I get so sucked into the hype, and get this far in debt for something that doesn’t fit me at all? No one ever told me that a “real” job would be so time consuming, leaving little time for outside endeavors. Eventually, I just decided to suck it up and give into what the world expected of me. I live to work instead of work to live, and I am miserable because of it.
So yes, I believe my brother should aim for the sky. He’s a smart kid. Not to mention, the WFPF (the World Federation of Parkour and Freerunning) has noticed him already. His best friend travels the country doing shows for Red Bull. My brother has joined him before and caught the attention of recruiters. There are scholarships out there that would send him to school for his craft. A stunt school may not seem like the most obvious choice for college, but it’s what he does well. And more importantly, it’s what makes him happy.
Here's another video shot after only two years of practicing.
I see what he can do without any training whatsoever, through only his determination alone. With the proper training, the best of the best teaching him, I can only imagine how far he could go.
He may only be 17 years old, but he's such an inspiration to me. Any time I want to say "I can't do it", my brother comes to mind. He has shown me that you can do so much with hard work and dedication, there really is nothing holding me back but my own fears. Life is both too short and too long to be stuck doing something you hate, always wondering “What if...?” and regretting not taking the chance to see if maybe you really had what it took all along.
If I'd known this when I was his age, who knows where I might be today. A veterinarian? A zoologist? Or maybe a famous movie star? I will never know, and that’s not something I want my baby brother to ever have to experience. I will do everything I can to help this happen. If he fails to make this his career, at least he will know he had tried. That’s more than I can say for myself.