Slomo's simple philosophy of life: "Do what you want to"

For today's spiritual uplift, there is no better way for you to spend 16 minutes than by watching "Slomo." 

I loved this documentary about a 69 year old guy, John Kitchin, who gives up his life as a neurologist and becomes a full-time inline skater -- in slow motion, sort of -- on the San Diego boardwalk. The filmmaker says: 

I’ve long been fascinated by people who make seismic changes late in life. It goes against the mainstream narrative: Grow up, pick a career, stick it out, retire.

I was also curious about Slomo’s concept of “the zone,” a realm of pure subjectivity and connectedness that he achieves through his skating. The only thing Slomo loves more than being in the zone is talking about the zone, so it wasn’t hard to persuade him to take part in a documentary film.

Slomo’s combination of candor and eloquence made him a natural on camera, and his background as a neurologist legitimized his metaphysical theories about skating, lateral motion and the brain.

But like many of the people who saw him skating by, I couldn’t help wondering: was this guy nuts, or was he onto something? And was his mantra – “Do what you want to” – translatable to those of us without the nest egg of a retired doctor?

But just like the throngs of Slomo fans on Pacific Beach, I couldn’t get enough of him, and was determined to capture the effect he had on people in a cinematic way.

Maybe (well, more than maybe) I liked the film so much because I'm a senior citizen longboarder /skateboarder myself. (Did my thing on the Venice Beach boardwalk recently.) Along with, most recently, an addiction to the StreetStrider, an outdoor elliptical bike. 

Hopefully the documentary video is still available when you read this. I had to sit through a short NY Times ad before being able to watch it at the top of the page. Small price to pay. The film made me smile. It inspired me. 

"Do what you want to."

Sure, Kitchin's philosophy of life will strike some as too simplistic, too self-centered, too impractical. But, hey, he's doing it. Beautifully.

For more insights into Slomo, as Kitchins is called these days, here's an interview with him. And for a fascinating look into his deeper view of the cosmos, read his "The Zone." Excerpt:

The Zone is all that is pure subjectivity. The Zone is composed entirely of subjectivity. Subjectivity extends into space right up to the edge of perception and thought, but it does not extend beyond perception into the Non-Zone.

Subjectivity has its own type of relationship with space and time.  Subjectivity is the part of the human experience that exists as happening right now to one's self. The Zone is the "inside" part of this realm of pure subjectivity. For practical purposes, the Zone is pure subjectivity itself, and pure subjectivity is the Zone itself.

Part of Kitchin's essay makes sense, part doesn't; but who am I to know the difference, really.

Here's the trailer for the film.

 

 

 

Comments

[777]

The Zone is all that is pure subjectivity.
The Zone is composed entirely of subjectivity. Subjectivity extends into space right up to the edge of perception and thought, but it does not extend beyond perception into the Non-Zone.

Great Solopism

thought is quite else than perception
It corresponds with the RS regions, what he is stating ( non-zone= maha sunna)

===
May I use this comm
to ask
JUAN from Spain
if the April Bandara with our GIHF still stands

I heard that some April gatherings in Delhi were cancelled

Last weekend in Beas must have been physically heavy
with 1.8 million visitors

777

-

[Willie R]

Very interesting video. I liked what Slomo said near the end of the video: "At this point, I am trying to GET TO THE END OF MY LIFE without becoming an asshole again." (capitalization of the phrase deliberate on my part).
I did not understand Slomo's explanation of why lateral acceleration is so physically satisfying. Perhaps it is because physical satisfaction is something that I have, personally, seldom achieved. I have always settled for "good enough".
As for "do what you want to do" - that is the province and privilege of those fortunate enough to be possessed of the wherewithal, the physical attributes, and the resources to blunt the stark realization of the transience of existence (reference the capitalization in the above-mentioned quote).
Most of us are equipped to do only what we must to to survive - which may actually be tantamount to doing what you want to do, because what you want to do is survive.

[cc]

It used to be that when I saw an old person indulging in his "second childhood", I considered him senile. Nowadays, when I see a geezer behaving like a kid, I consider him enlightened.

[tucson]

What if you can't do what you want to do? Do something else? Well, that's fine but it isn't what you want to. It's what you have to do or must do or not do because you can't do what you want to do. Of course we all want to do what we want to do and would do it if we could but if we can't then we can't. It's like saying don't be unhappy, just be happy. I have even said that, but it doesn't help if you're unhappy. Of course one would be happy if they could, but they can't. So they are just unhappy and that's it.

[ThatThingThatYouDo]

Pfft, he's only chasing temporary moments of happiness like a beggar begging for scraps of food. The smart money's on the eternal bliss route.

[Brian Hines]

Pray tell... what is the eternal bliss route? I haven't seen any road map to that place. Why would the "smart money" be on that seemingly non-existent option?

[ThatThingThatYouDo]

I'm assuming the eternal bliss is the end result of the meditation. You know, connecting with the Shabd, that sort of thing.

[june schlebusch]

The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby is a children's novel by the Reverend Charles Kingsley The protagonist is Tom, a young chimney sweep, who falls into a river after encountering an upper-class girl named Ellie and being chased out of her house. There he drowns and is transformed into a "water baby", as he is told by a caddisfly—an insect that sheds its skin—and begins his moral education. The story is thematically concerned with Christian redemption, though Kingsley also uses the book to argue that England treats its poor badly, and to question child labour, among other themes.

Tom embarks on a series of adventures and lessons, and enjoys the community of other water babies once he proves himself a moral creature. The major spiritual leaders in his new world are the fairies Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby (a reference to the Golden Rule), Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, and Mother Carey. Weekly, Tom is allowed the company of Ellie, who did not drown after he did.

Grimes, his old master, drowns as well, and in his final adventure, Tom travels to the end of the world to attempt to help the man where he is being punished for his misdeeds. Tom helps Grimes to find repentance, and Grimes will be given a second chance if he can successfully perform a final penance. By proving his willingness to do things he does not like, if they are the right things to do, Tom earns himself a return to human form, and becomes "a great man of science" who "can plan railways, and steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth". He and Ellie are united, although the book claims that they never marry.

This is one of my favourite fairy tales about "cause and effect".

[june schlebusch]

How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none ... And no one has a right to say that no water babies exist till they have seen no water babies existing, which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water babies.

Quote by Kingsley.

[cc]

Believers like to say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it is. The mind's explanation of what's going on outside the mind is either fact-based or faith-based, and the faith-full insist that facts don't matter as much as passionate insistence.