Être Fort Pour Être Utile

Be strong to be useful

Me in 2021, on the bars and her balcony behind me

Sometime in 2022 on a Saturday evening, I was in the kitchen cooking when I heard my neighbour knocking on her door.

We both live on the first floor of a 3-storey building with stairwells that echo.

I could hear her knocking and calling her son to open the door.

I immediately figured out what was going on. Before she left, she must have instructed her son (who was like 5 or 6 years old) to lock the door from inside.

And to only open it for her when she comes back.

Apparently, the boy slept off and there's no way for her to get in unless he wakes up and opens it.

But I knew there was another way.

I've been living in that building my whole life and have played around long enough to know I could go to the backyard, climb the scaffolding, and get into her balcony.

I've even been fantasising about doing this long before she moved in with her husband.

The thing is, the backyard is where the landlord lives and half the time the gate is usually locked.

Apart from that, I didn't know how I would open my door, greet this woman, and offer to break into her apartment.

So I banished the thought and continued cooking...

For almost an hour she kept knocking and knocking and calling her son's name to open the door.

And as her frustration-laden voice echoed in the stairwell, it wrenched my heart with each passing minute knowing I could help and yet did nothing.

I finished cooking and as I turned off the gas cooker, I knew I had to do something.

I opened my door, greeted her and asked what happened. She told me the same thing I already suspected.

I then asked if her balcony door was unlocked so I could climb in from the backyard and open her door from inside.

Her facial expression didn't hide her surprise as she said, "Eh...it should be open."

I went to the backyard, hung on the scaffolding bar, did a pull-up and started climbing to get into her balcony.

I found the door open, I saw the boy and his younger siblings sleeping with the cartoon on the TV playing loudly.

I unbolted her door from inside and opened it to meet a very surprised look on her face.

She thanked me with so much gratitude in her eyes that I felt like Superman saving a kid from a burning building.

As I went back inside and lay on the bed, it hit me. The 5+ years (at that time) of training Parkour finally paid off.

The Parkour motto finally made sense...

Être fort pour être utile - be strong to be useful.

I was able to use my physical abilities to help someone in need.

By October it would be 9 years since I started training Parkour.

Sometimes I feel bad that I can't do a backflip or other cool tricks, and I'm neither buff nor particularly shredded.

But in times like this, I remember that what is more important is having strength that is useful.

Parkour comes from parcours du combattant — which loosely translates to 'the way of the fighter.'

But even this training using the "la méthode naturelle" (Natural Method) was introduced by the physical educator, Georges Hébert.

Who during his extensive travels, was impressed by the physical development and movement skills of indigenous peoples in Africa and wrote:

"Their bodies were splendid, flexible, nimble, skillful, enduring, resistant and yet they had no other tutor in gymnastics but their lives in nature."

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And so when you hit the gym to build muscle, lose fat or look ripped, remember that your broad shoulders will not shield the bombs dropping in Yemen. Your rock-hard abs will not stop global warming. Your bubble butt and inner thigh gap will not... I think you get what I mean now.

The point is, why be strong if it won't be useful to others?

Many people out there need your strength, don't be like me to my neighbour and take too long offering your help to them.

Maybe it's time to reframe the way you train and imagine yourself being the only person who can help.

And if you're thinking your life is relatively safe, you're not fighting in the military and will never get to use this strength in a real life dangerous situation.

You're probably right.

For all my years of training, the remotely useful things I ever got to do, albeit reluctantly, was to climb walls and jump fences to pick balls.

I still wait for the day I'm going to be the hero who saves a kid from a burning building.

But whatever physical abilities you choose to train, remember...

Être fort pour être utile.

Be strong to be useful.

Stanley