Key One: Happiness
Beginning Quote: "A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him." ~Alexander Solzenitsyn
The first Key to Life is happiness. You just need to be happy. For how can you truly enjoy life if you aren't happy?
Take a look at your current situation. Are you happy with the direction you are taking your life? If not, you don't have the first Key to Life, which means you can't unlock the door. The way to get the first Key is simple: be happy. Even if you are in a situation where you can't really change, you can still look on the bright side of things. Maybe then you can find the first Key to Life.
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Blood. Chalk. Yelling. Crying. Bruises...that's my life. My name is Avery and I'm a Level 8 gymnast. I practically live at the gym: my school, my work, my sport, my cafeteria, etc. Believe me, gymnastics is not easy. At all. Yes, you get to flip eight feet in the air. Yes, you get billions of medals and awards. But the truth is, my life's a nightmare.
Workout starts at 8:00 a.m. You get up, you get there no matter how you feel, no matter what you want to do. After a variety of different aerobics, it's a quick stretch before you start lite conditioning.
Vault is usually the first event in morning training. Sprinting eighty feet down a runway, throwing yourself into a round-off and hoping to land on the board,- a piece of equipment about two feet wide that has spring in between two wood planks, the top which has a thin strip of carpet covering it- flip blindsided up to the table, block off your hands, flip up to eight feet in the air, and somehow have your feet manage to find the floor. That's vault for you. We repeat this over and over again, getting yelled at or corrected by coach if we don't do it perfect enough. Having fun so far? Great! It gets better.
Bars. Swinging 360 degrees around a rounded horizontal pole of wood, depending on gravity and your momentum to keep you from flying off, letting go, flipping and twisting through the air, catching the bar again, doing more crazy 360 circles, letting go at exactly the right moment, flipping and twisting through the air, finding your feet, and sticking the landing. Repeat over, and over, and over again. That's bars for you. More of getting yelled at. Halfway done!
A four inch piece of wood, metal, and leather. Beam. We jump backwards blindly, find our hands, block off of them, step down one foot, bring the other back to it, push off of them, repeat except no hands this time and your feet don't come together at the end, do a little choreographed dance, walk down the beam a little, push off of one foot, quickly switch legs in the air, hit a 180 split, land on the same foot, step together, do a back flip. Don't forget this is all on a four inch wide object. Do more crazy stuff like that, run, round-off, flip and twist, find your feet. That's beam for you. Repeat a million times. More yelling. Three down, one to go!
Floor. A thin strip of foam with a carpet on top and springs beneath. Double flips. Triple twists. One and a half step out to double full. Front layout, front full. Dancing to music. More 180 switch leaps, switch fulls, switch sides. Triple and double turns. Repeat. Repeat, again. Repeat, again. That's floor for you. More yelling. Pretty sweet, huh?
A quick stretch down ends morning training. Two and a half hours to do school at the gym. After two and a half hours, repeat all the events. This time, they're fifteen minutes longer each rotation. Also, there's one hour of conditioning at the end. Brutal conditioning. Stretch down. Done for the day!
Fifteen hours later, back at the gym!
So, that's my life. Sound like a nightmare. Well, it is, but you know what? It makes me happy. I actually enjoy it. Sometimes, I ask myself why I ever committed myself to such a sport. I never get an answer. It doesn't matter, though. Gymnastics makes me happy, even if my body or part of my mind starts telling me otherwise. Yes, it's severe, nearly impossible, painful, and tiring. Yes, sometimes I want to quit, to give up. But I keep going because deep, deep down inside I know that this is the direction I want to take my life, that this is what makes me happy. That this gives me the first Key.
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You see, even though Avery doesn't always think that gymnastics is what she wants, she keeps going, looks on the bright side of things, and has good results. Happy results. Maybe you can do the same thing. Maybe that's how you'll find the first Key to Life.
Good Luck with your searching! Hopefully you will find happiness and the first Key. And will be one step closer to opening the door.
Ending Quote: "No one is in control of your happiness but you...therefore you have the power...to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change." ~Barbara De Angelis
YOU ARE READING
The Keys to Life
Non-Fiction"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them the...
