Living your Dreams — Parkour Edition

this picture was taken much later than the story described here. this photo was taken in Taipei in 2017. I was hired as a model for parkour stock imagery and the photographer sent me this photo after the shoot.

I want to take you back to a time when I did something wild in my life. (I have done many wild things, but this was one of those times I often look back on that continues to inspire and motivate my present self.)

When I was in my junior year of college, I went to Shanghai for a paid summer internship at a business consulting firm. I worked for 3 months as a business analyst, doing due diligence and writing white papers for Fortune 500 companies wanting to enter the China market. 

It was a sought-after 9-5 job in a beautiful skyscraper with an incredible view, on one of the most fashionable streets in the central business district of Shanghai. 

My colleagues and fellow interns were thrilled (and a little self-important, to be honest) about working there. 

I showed up everyday like a normal person, dressed professionally (which quite honestly I believe is against my nature), attended business meetings, gave presentations, did research, wrote business papers, worked in front of a computer. And I was very good at it.

And it was the most boring thing I have ever done in my life.

A friend of mine who was interning with me, told me during one of our lunch breaks that this was his dream job, and he hoped he would be back after graduation.

I remember staring at him blankly with a respectful nod while silently thinking he was crazy. This was about the furthest away from my dream as I could imagine.

I realized very quickly that I am not a normal person. I am not meant for a normal job. And definitely not meant for the office. 

I am so lucky to have realized it at such a young age, and in such a short amount of time! I am still incredibly, incredibly grateful for that experience just for this realization.

And, I believe I landed in the right place, at the right time, to exactly start the next wildy amazing chapter of my life.

One day, as I was having lunch in our office lounge, I noticed a magazine on the coffee table. 

On the cover of the magazine were young men running and jumping around the city, between rooftops of buildings and skyscrapers it seemed.

I was mesmerized by the photo. I picked up the magazine and stared at it. And I thought to myself…without ever knowing it, this is what I have wanted to do my whole life.

It made no sense to me, but I just knew…that what they were doing, was what I wanted to do. Was this a thing? “Parkour”? What’s that? Is this an actual thing? Because I feel like I’ve just been doing this on my own for fun but I never had a name for it.

I opened the magazine and read the article on parkour, the first time I had heard this word. (It was 2010. Parkour was still very new and unheard of at the time.) There were people doing this in the city! They had meet-ups! Their contact info was in the article!

I called immediately. They invited me to join their training that same night.

I went. 

It was the most physically grueling thing I had ever done up until that point and I almost died, but I loved. 

I was in love. This was it. I found what I wanted to do. I discovered my passion!

From that day on, though I could barely walk the next day, the soreness and physical fatigue was unlike anything I had experienced before – there was a fire in my heart. I felt incredibly alive. I was filled with passion. And purpose. And…this feeling of…Life. Of being so so alive. And free. And like I could take on the world.

After work I would train in the evening and throughout the night. I was obsessed. I trained until my body had reached its physical limit, and then some. Often into the early hours of the morning.

And then go to work. I remember being so tired that I would crawl under my cubicle desk and curl up into a ball and fall asleep. And my friend would kick me under the desk if our boss was approaching and I would hurriedly scramble out of hiding and get back to work.

I was so conditioned at the time that this behavior was not “good”. But I was so tired of being good! I was so tired of being the good girl. And I found the situation to be so amusing. And my soul was happy. I was not afraid of anything – not of losing the job, not of receiving bad remarks on my performance, not of anything.

I had found what I loved. And I didn’t care about external measurements and judgments. And there was so much power in that. I was free.

After that summer, I returned to the U.S. to finish my senior year of college, then flew right back to Shanghai. With no plan. No job lined up. Nowhere to live. And very little money (which I had managed to barely save up waitressing part-time while also paying for my college living expenses).

All I knew was that I wanted to do parkour. In the city of Shanghai. With the friends I had made and trained with a year ago.

So that is what I did.

this photo is actually from my parkour days in 2011 in Shanghai!

I trained. I trained like it was my mission. I trained day and night – for the love of it, for no other reason. There was no end goal. There was no “I’m training for…______(some accomplishment).” I was just training. For the training itself. Because I loved it with all my heart and soul.

Those years…I feel like I really knew what it was like to live a street life. I lived and ran on the street. My parkour “brothers” – who really became like family – mostly came from very poor backgrounds. They were the ones for whom school was just not for. They did not have much in the way of money. But they had passion. And heart. And willpower. And dreams. I was so inspired by them. To this day, they are some of the most incredible, talented, passionate, motivated, determined, humble people I have ever met.

I remember we used to eat street noodles almost every night for dinner. And between my “youngest brother” and the others, we could only afford for one of us to add a fried egg to our noodles. I always paid for the youngest to have an egg. And I felt so happy about it. I remember that so well.

Gradually, people began scouting us. Gradually, more and more people knew our names. We formed a team. We started to get offers for events, performances, movies, stunt work. We never imagined any of it. But when you are doing what you love with all your heart and passion, and when you are incredibly good at it, the world can’t help but notice.

This is a story about following your heart and living your dreams. About knowing yourself. And your own truth.

About not taking the normal or safe route. About not knowing where it will all lead, but trusting. Trusting that your heart, your spirit, will never lead you astray.

Today, many of my parkour brothers are now famous, are successfully running their own gyms and businesses, and have starred or are starring in movies. I myself became quite famous in that world. 

What I have learned and faced in that whole journey – I’ll leave to another post ;) but I will say – we are capable of achieving so much greatness…often beyond what we can imagine. But we have to dream. And be willing to go after our dreams. 

And - We are allowed to change. We are allowed to pursue one steadfast dream for a lifetime, and we are allowed to dream new dreams. We are allowed to not know. We are allowed to pause and pick up again. We are allowed to decide who and what we want to be…in any given moment. 

So we put all other voices aside. And trust. In the voice of our own soul.

This is an invitation, my friend, through my own story — to start living the dreams within you. 

If not now, when?

Love,

Simone

Shanghai, 2011, at one of our regular training spots along the river

PS - I wish I could provide more pictures with this post. The fact is, I was very analog at the time. I used to parkour the city without carrying a phone. Carrying anything seemed like a hassle to me. I was also very camera shy. I didn’t like to be filmed. Looking back, I really wish I had filmed myself more! Those were really my peak parkour days and what I was capable of was really incredible. I believe I may have some more photos on a very old computer, but do not have access to it currently. I have also been known to delete large amounts of photos throughout my life as a practice of letting go of my ego 😅 it feels strange now, and I’m sure I could have done it in other ways, but that’s how it was. And that is why I don’t have many photos to upload here!

photo taken in Taipei, 2017 — well after the story here, but the love for what you once loved so fiercely, never dies

photo taken in Taipei, 2017 — we are what we live