Quirkbag Collection #66 – 01.11.26
When I tell people that I do Calisthenics as a NUS CCA, the first question I usually get is “What can you do?”, and my first instinct is “Damn, I can’t do anything impressive except a muscle-up”. Progress in calisthenics is hard and painstaking, and it is one of those things that has no real end goal. Sure, you could aim to master the planche, or the front lever, or the famous handstand. But there is no “final checkpoint”. It is what I categorise as an “infinite game” (inspired by something I read). Particularly for Calisthenics, failure is inevitable, injuries are probable and the difficulty is, well, guaranteed. So why bother to try?
The real point behind the pursuit of calisthenics, or any ‘infinite game”, I believe, is the audacity to try. It is forcing progress in the face of failure, pushing your limits as an individual to build your body and mind. It is having the guts to not just say, but believe, “Why not me?”
Having the audacity to try is not something new. You have probably seen it before in a different form – risk-taking, innovation, unconventional approaches. But yet, we lack the same audacity and even question its value despite knowing that it has potential to leave outsized benefits.
The Role Of Audacity
The audacity to try is scary and difficult. It fundamentally requires stepping up and expanding our identity and lifestyle to do something new. No one can give us that sense of courage, we can only find it when enough time has passed and enough inspiration has been felt.
You might find “fortune favors the bold” as a synonym for having the audacity to try. Yet being bold is not like being audacious. Having the audacity implies a certain dissatisfaction and even a hint of fearlessness and intolerance for the current state. It might be a form of self-growth, or self-protest. Regardless, I feel the audacity comes from a desire to change.
Of course, it can be taken to an extreme, but rest assured, I won’t be convincing you to try to stand on the moon (that would be preposterous, at least for now) any time soon.
As I experience more of university life, I grow increasingly convinced that we control most of our life’s experience. I spend a lot of time thinking (and writing) about the choices we make, but beyond that, I realised that the audacity to try is a subtle driving force behind how I made my decisions.
As there is fear in trying, there too is power. If you told me 1 year ago that I would be doing Calisthenics, I would probably laugh in disbelief. Yet today, I hardly doubt I am worse off having taken on this pursuit. Part of having the audacity to try is having the stubbornness to persevere. We feel compelled to keep trying because we wanted to take this on, in some twisted psychological way. Ironically, these are the pursuits we might find hardest to let go of even if we are not good at it.
Audacity Brings Unexpected Stories
The audacity to try brings you to places and situations you never thought possible. You learn and do things you never thought would fit your character. But you do them anyway, because you, in that moment, had the audacity to try. It is precisely because you find it uncharacteristic and out of the norm that you need the audacity to try.
I played squash, floorball and pickleball for the first time ever, for absolutely no reason other than my audacity to try. Again, I would not have bothered trying them ordinarily because they are not a part of who I see myself as.
“It’s not me.”
Of course not. Nothing ever is until you get close enough to the pursuit to try and then reject it. But even that takes the audacity to try. And no one will ever question your audacity because it is natural to just play life in “default mode”. It is not that you have to try everything, but it is that you cannot do nothing yet expect something.
Trying pickleball gave me a reason to meet a friend. Just through an invitation to play, we spend time hitting stray balls back and forth, laughing over how extremely bad we both are at the game.
But this is how the stories and moments that follow the phrase “that time when we…” are created. The less we try, the less we have to hold on to and experience.
Audacity Brings Unexpected Friends
Months ago, somebody asked if I would run a coffee-making interest group in my hostel with them. At first, I hesitated. It is so easy to say “No because” out of fear, out of pre-existing lifestyle beliefs. I used to hold on so tightly to my controlled lifestyle that nothing could pull me from only working on academic pursuits; nothing else was worth my time.
But changing your life requires you to actually change.
I had the audacity to say yes, even before I knew what I was actually going to do. Perhaps it is one of those moments when you know saying “no” was a stupid choice that you would end up regretting; that any outcome would triumph over the alternative of never having tried.
Besides living more stories to recount one day, you get to meet new people whom you never would expect to be friends with.
Because of this decision, I met a bunch of new people – people who run communities and share usage of the hostel cafe area; who help strengthen and engage the community in the hostel. Finding the people we want to be around, who make us comfortable and interest us to deepen the connection is incredibly difficult.
I remind myself sometimes that the people I know, whom I enjoy being around, would not have been in my circle had I not agreed to taking a chance. And maybe that is one of the greatest perks available – the ‘magic’ hand of life working to reward you for saying ‘yes’.
We all deserve to be audacious for our own sake – to try and fail at something we find interesting. Because if it takes audacity to try, that means it is worth pursuing for us.
Do You Secretly Have The Audacity?
Having the audacity to try increases the surface area of serendipity in life. As someone who believes in serendipity, I find the audacity to try to be what connects the dots. I cannot see the whole picture yet, but I know I am drawing something (at least I naively hope so). I hope to figure it out one day.
The first time I went for Calisthenics, the captain joked that we needed to be delusional to continue Calisthenics simply because of the painstaking and long-term effort and training required to master a single stunt. I never forgot that.
That line reminds me that things worth pursuing in life require some child-like naivety, the delusion of a love-stricken adolescent and the stubbornness of a mule. I had the audacity to try Calisthenics; now I choose to be delusional to keep trying.
There is always going to be a reason against doing or trying something. But some future version of you might look back and wonder if you led a life as fulfilling as you could.
Or did you shy away when life gave you rare opportunities to write your history?
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Hi! I’m Zac, the guy behind this serendipitous, quirky blog. I’m currently on a quest to find out more about myself – who I am and what life has to offer. This blog is my little space where I step out of my comfort zone to share my thoughts and life experiences. I hope you enjoy reading the weekly posts. Share them if you like.
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