My own reality

Dr Fahim Chand | Monday August 1, 2022 06:00

The blue summer sky overlaid the scene below. One wondered how God, our master artist created such a masterpiece with such simplicity.

A smooth swipe of his blue tinged paintbrush from whence came the always awe-inspiring covering of our planet.

This cosmic canopy the catalyst for fuelling our hopes and unending dreams.

And even the spark to question who we are and what are we doing on this floating rock. It is as we gaze to the sky and realise the unimaginable vastness of our universal realm that we realise how truly insignificant everything is in the grand scheme of things. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It must be Friday. Before commencing the task at hand, my eyes take another open-air visual tour.

The large leaf condensed trees provide a bold visual pathway along the boulevards, snaking through the beautiful Victorian buildings. I wonder who planted the trees and how old they are? Ok now I’m just procrastinating. I return to my own reality.

As I gaze at the large table in front of me, I see a shiny metal track with a train like cab attached to it. The venue, physics lab Western University, Canada. As luck would have it, while my fellow science student friends were reading for the frivolity and fun of a university weekend, I was always stuck attempting to prove some scientific law. All on a Friday afternoon.

No matter how I had tried to change my timetable, I could not escape my end week date with scientific destiny. If I looked up to that blue sky I told you about earlier, I’d probably see God smiling and winking at me, reassuring me who was really in charge. Back to work. Today I, and my fellow science prisoners were each going to prove how momentum is conserved in an elastic collision.

Hold your breath and bring your popcorn. As we commenced and challenged our cranial capacities, another scientific phenomenon remained unchallenged. The fact that time slows to a snail’s pace in a university science lab on Fridays between 2pm and 5pm. If you aspire to a Nobel Price in Physics, there is your prize-winning subject. Please remember me in your acceptance speech.

And as the clock finally strikes 5pm, we gather our belongings and exit the building into the invigorating atmosphere. While we had been feeling consumed and lethargic as the class finally ended, the college weekend air was as always charged with electricity and rejuvenated instantly. As the adrenaline supercharged our own internal engines, we hastily made our way home.

While university always commands a place in our most cherished memories, I’m certain it is the weekends, brimming with its social smorgasbord of activities that we are most likely to insert into our waiting hippocampi, rather than the scintillating lecture on Corynebacterium michiganense. And today we were ready to make a deposit.

A group of us were going to one of the premier clubs in London, Ontario called The Ramp. An airy and spacious place with a large dance floor and filled with college students. This particular hangout catered to the preppy crowd.

Lacoste, Armani and Ralph Lauren casually and effortlessly populated this domain. As we entered, the voltaic atmosphere was exhilarating. We were lucky enough to find a table for all of us as a cascade of coloured lights and reverberating beats bombarded our bodies. As I surveyed the scene, the pulsating opening beats of Milli Vanilli’s Girl You Know It’s True powered into the waiting night. If you were not around at this particular moment in history, then you need to know that this song was in essence a legal and powerful drug. It had the capability to alter physiology and elevate your mental state. As the anthem piloted into the fast lane, the expansive dance floor filled to capacity.

The swollen mass of humanity pulsed and gyrated with no care in the world. A snapshot taken would have revealed beautiful young people as far as the eye could see. Time permitting, we went dancing almost every weekend. It provided unparalleled stress relief, great exercise and off course infinite fun. But how does it compare to regular exercise? A University of Brighton study found that dancing could expend more than 300 calories every half an hour. This meets or exceeds the amount of energy you burn during an easy run or swim. Even relatively tame forms of dance burn the same amount of calories as cycling.

In addition, the side to side and up and down motion activate and train the bodies muscles and tendons. Better still, a 2007 study showed dancing has been shown to elevate mood, decrease stress, improve energy and lessen anxiety. Though keep in mind that the amount of energy you expend is contingent with how hard you push yourself.

A gentle two-step is not going to measure up to an intense hilly run.

School and youth provide a myriad of chances to exercise. There is always a pick up basketball game or football game to join and of course the ample opportunities to trip the light fantastic at various parties and clubs. As we move on and life intervenes, time constraints may preclude these opportunities.

Maybe all we need to elevate our health status is a pair of dancing shoes in front of a mirror with dance music master Steve Aoki’s latest sounding forcefully through a speaker?