Goodwill to all men

NOTE: This post was meant to go up on Christmas Eve, but WordPress clearly broke on me so apparently you get it now instead- sorry. Ah well, might as well put it up anyway…

 

Ah, Christmas; such an interesting time of year. The season of plenty, the season of spending too much, the season of eating too much, the season of decisions we later regret and those moments we always remember. The season where some families will go without food to keep the magic alive for their children, the season where some new feuds are born but old ones are set aside, and the season where goodwill to all men (and women) becomes a key focus of our attention.

When I was young, I always had a problem with this. I had similar issues with Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day even more so (I don’t know how I came to know that it was an entirely commercial invention, but there you go), and whilst Christmas was awesome enough that I wasn’t going to ruin it by seasonal complaints, one thing always bugged me about ‘the season of goodwill’. Namely, why can’t we just be nice to each other all the time, rather than just for a few weeks of the year?

A cynic might say we get all the goodwill out of our systems over Christmas in preparation for being miserable bastards for the rest of the year, but cynicism is unhealthy and in any case, I try to keep it out of my bloggy adventures. Plus, we are capable of doing nice stuff for the rest of the year, even if we don’t do so much as some might think we should, and humans never cease to be awesome beings when they put their mind to it. No, it’s not that we give up being nice for the rest of the year, but more that we are quite clearly eminently able of being more nice but not, seemingly, all the time.

Goodwill to our fellow man is not the only seasonal occurrence that seems more prevalent over the festive period for no obvious reason; many of our Christmas traditions, both old and modern, follow a similar thread. Turkey, for instance; whilst it’s never been Christmas fare in my household for various reasons, I know enough people for whom a turkey dinner plus trimmings is the festive standard to know that these same people never have the bird at any other time of the year (I know you Americans have it on Thanksgiving, but I don’t know enough about how all that works to comment). I saw a comment online a couple of weeks ago about eggnog (another seemingly American-specific thing), and mentioning how this apparently awesome stuff (never tried it myself, so again can’t comment) is never available at any other time of the year. A response soon followed courtesy of a shop worker, who said there’s always a supply of it tucked away somewhere throughout the year in the shop where he worked, but that nobody ever bought it outside of December.

We should remember that there is something of a fine line to tread when we discuss these ideas; there are a lot of things that only occur at Christmas time (the giving of gifts, decorations, the tree and so on) that don’t need any such explanation because they are solely associated with the season. If one were to put tinsel up in June, then you might be thought a bit odd for your apparent celebration of Christmas in midsummer; tinsel is not associated with anything other than festive celebration, so in any other context it’s just weird.  This is particularly true given that tinsel and other such decorations are just that; decorations, with no purpose outside of festive celebration. Similarly, whilst gift-giving is appreciated throughout the rest of year (although it’s best to do so in moderation), going to all the trouble of thinking, deliberating, wrapping secretively and making a big fanfare over it is only associated with special occasions (Christmases or birthdays). Stuff like turkey and eggnog can probably be classified as somewhere in the middle; very much associated with the Christmas period, but still separate from it and capable for being consumed at other times of the year.

The concept of goodwill and being nice to people is a little different; not just something that is possible throughout the rest of the year, but something actively encouraged as being a commendable trait, so the excuse of ‘it’s just a feature of the season’ doesn’t really cut it in this context. Some might say that quite a lot of the happiness exuded at Christmastime is somewhat forced, or at the very least tiring, as anyone who’s looked at the gaunt face between the smiling facade of a Christmas day Mum can tell. Therefore, it could be argued that Christmas good cheer is simply too much work to keep up for the rest of the year, and that if we were forced to keep our smiley faces on we would either snap or collapse in exhaustion before long. Others might say that keeping good cheer confined to one portion of the year makes it that much more fun and special when it comes round each year, but to me the reason is slightly more… mathematical.

Human beings are competitive, ambitious creatures, perpetually seeking to succeed and triumph over the odds. Invariably, this frequently means triumphing over other people too, and this is not a situation that lends itself to being dedicated to being nice to one another; competition and the strive to succeed may be key features behind human and personal success, but they do not lend themselves to being nice to one another. Not infrequently, such competition requires us to deliberately take the not-nice option, as dicking on our competition often provides the best way to compete with them; or at the very least, we sometimes need to be harsh bastards to make sure stuff gets done at all. This concept is known in philosophy as the prisoner’s dilemma, which I should get round to doing a post on one of these days.

However at Christmas time achievement becomes of secondary importance to enjoyment; to spending time with friends and family, and to just enjoying the company of your nearest and dearest. Therefore, comparatively little actually gets done over the Christmas period (at least from an economist’s point of view), and so the advantage presented by mild dickishness to some others for the rest of the year disappears. Everything in life becomes reduced down to a state where being nice to everyone around us best serves our purpose of making our environment a fun, comfortable place to be. At Christmas time, we have no reason to be nasty, and every reason to be nice; and for that reason alone, Christmas is a wonderful thing. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Advertisement

Part 4… and I think there’s going to be another one…

Part 4 of my series on gym-less workouts should be the last one on that subjects specifically- however, since a related idea has been knocking around my head for a while (since I started this series), I’m going to continue with my running theme of sport n stuffs for at least one more post. Whether I go on for even longer than that is entirely up to whether I can think of enough material for it, and whether I think it’s got boring.

But first, my final two exercises:

FOREARMS
Where:  Er… on your forearms. As in the bit between hand and elbow. Something that not a lot of people know about the forearms is that their main function is not in fact to move the wrist (although they do do that), but to control the hand and fingers (which contain no muscles of their own due to lack of space, but connect to small muscles in the forearm). As such, they are responsible for the strength of your grip.
Exercise: Grip strength is a very important part of a lot of everyday and workout exercises- one of the most common beneficiaries is pull-ups, so doing those will build your forearms a little. However, to work them more specifically (and make pull-ups of all kinds an easier process), you basically need to find a way of gripping something against resistance. If you really want, you can buy these things consisting of two handles with a spring in between them that you clench and unclench, but I’m sticking to non-equipment exercises here. You can just find something to grab hold of and repeatedly clench and unclench against it, but for more satisfying results just take any heavy object with a handle- if you happen to have a shopping bag that does not lacerate your fingers, that’s perfect, but a handle at the top of a rucksack will work too. Hang the handle from outstretched fingers, and simply repeatedly clench and relax your hand. Best of all, this is the kind of thing you can do casually on the way home from the shops, meaning you don’t have to set aside time to work it out. Forearms are perhaps not the most crucial muscle group, but they are useful nonetheless and, given that they are really easy to work, you’d be pretty dumb not to.

FULL BODY
Where: …come on, really? I mean really?
Exercise: Many serious gym-goers don’t really believe in full-body workouts other than as a fitness technique, and next to none would be able to name on for working all of the body’s muscles. This is unsurprising- most people would associate a ‘full-body workout’ either as a descriptive term for a gym session, rather than exercise, or something like swimming, which will work just about every muscle gently, and will mostly only build endurance (although, offset against that, the most physically impressive guy I have ever met set it all off as a swimmer, so if you know what you’re doing…). The thing is, resistance training (using weight as a load) fundamentally doesn’t work more than one or two muscle groups well without technique and effectiveness suffering, and so is not designed for full-body exercises. There is, however, an alternative that is- tension training.
I came across tension training in martial arts, where it is used to train the body to stiffen up when it is hit and thus absorb blows better. It basically consists of performing a range of motions, without any weight, very slowly and controlledly, but working against your own body to provide the load to work against. To explain- muscles work in antagonistic pairs, meaning one contracts to move a joint one way, and its partner contracts to move it in the opposite direction. The principle of tension training is that by tensing both muscles at once, if the joint is to move then the muscle contracting must overcome the force of the other muscle pulling against it, and thus both muscles get worked. Tension training done properly involves performing very slow, simple motions whilst endeavouring to keep every muscle in your body tensed up as you perform the motion.
A key feature of tension training is breathing- you should do long, controlled breaths in time with the motion, breathing out as you contract and perform the stretch (your breath should sound very strained, like a sound effect from some deathly minion in a fantasy film, as it forces its way through your tense neck) and breathing in as you relax and return to position. To use an example, if your chosen motion were a bicep curl, then you would tense up all your muscles (bicep, tricep, chest, back, neck, legs, abdominals, everything) and breathe out in one long, slow, 10 second breath as you contracted the biceps and brought them up to your chest, and then relax and breathe out as you return to your starting position. This strict breathing pattern deprives your body of oxygen, forcing it to learn to use it more efficiently and greatly benefiting your muscular endurance, whilst the exercise itself works muscles for strength (all muscles get a bit of work, but the ones worked hardest are those moving, so the biceps and triceps in the example above). Tension exercises can be incredibly tiring, especially if done at the end of a session (which is probably where they belong to prevent you becoming too tired to do anything else), but are worth the effort for the benefits they can reap- they should take about 3-5 minutes overall, over a variety of motions and exercises (some martial arts incorporate them into a ‘dance’ of strikes and blocks for variety and training), and should provide an interesting line of exercises for everyone from the lowliest newbie trying to fulfil a New Year’s resolution, to the most musclebound hunk who’s in the gym 4 times a week, every week, for the last 5 years. I thoroughly recommend them.