two years ago was the first time i had an out of body experience
there’s nothing like your first
It was as if I was seeing color for the first time. I felt like I could fly. The world grew 10 times larger and it felt like anything was possible for the first time in my life. It felt like I was no longer Sisyphus, free of the boulder weighing me down.
I wasn’t high, I was euphoric. I was euphoric over going to a ninja gym for the first time since I started watching American Ninja Warrior.
—
American Ninja Warrior started off as guilt-watching for my mother.
She always was getting me to run down the stairs for something she was watching on TV. I would stand there at the top of the stairs first to ask what it is and if it was worth it and every time she’d interrupt me to yell at me to come down because she wouldn’t be calling to me if it wasn’t. And so I’d go, and I wouldn’t laugh at America’s Got Talent or some video clip on ET or gawk at the Survivor challenge they’re doing. One of the times was for American Ninja Warrior. I shrugged, said it was pretty cool, and left.
One scene turned into several scenes which turned into one show and suddenly I was next to my mother on the couch hollering at the screen at people running an obstacle course.
I was hooked.
—
At a certain point, you start to ask yourself if you can do the thing you’re watching on TV
American Ninja Warrior is special because you can actually exist in that reality. The course is not defined by age or occupation. It is not defined by the number of years you’ve been competing. I have never watched a show with such athletic intensity that had an Olympic Gymnast and an AC repairment man be on the same course. And when you see that some 5'8ft 16 year old can out-compete a ninja veteran, you can actually visualize that the odds could be in your favor.
For the first time in a long time, I had hope that I could actually do something.
—
On October 14th, 2019, I tried out ninja warrior for the first time.
I stepped into the little gym that could, inside an aircraft carrier in the outskirts of Richmond, California, ubering with someone I met for the first time just hours before because I couldn’t bear to have this experience alone.
I was met with the feeling kids have going to Disneyland for the first time (or if you’re me, Six Flags).
It was glorious.
I was shit the entire time
I signed a waiver that I had some experience with when I had absolutely none. My forearms ached, my hands were tearing and my feet were giving out.
But I ran up the warped wall, that behemoth of a wall, for the first time. I swung on rings, I ran balance obstacles, I attempted the trampoline.
I didn’t care I was shit. I didn’t care how much it hurt. All that mattered was that I was there, living this dream I’ve been dreaming. It all came together so suddenly. I was living.
I was alive.
And when I left, I felt something wash over me. It was as if I climbed a summit and achieved some physical feat while ascending to some higher mental state. I felt at any moment the ground would disappear under me and I would just start to fly home. The euphoria was overwhelming. When I called my mom I started to cry.
I said to myself that if this is how this made me feel then it is something that I have to pursue.
There are little things in my life that have given me an overwhelming wave of emotion
But when it does I hold on to it. I put it in a jar of “Rare Occurrences of Asia Feeling Something.” This thing? whatever it was, I hope was not a one-time feeling. If I have to seek it out again then I just might, because anything that can make me feel like that is something that makes life worth living.
