Tai-chi (太极)

What is "tai-chi" (太极)?

In layman's understanding, tai-chi is a form of exercise that originated from China. Whilst it started out as the elderly folk practising tai-chi to keep their limbs mobile (and with it, the hope of longevity), an increasing number of younger people are taking up this exercise. The routines are in slow motion and groups of people practise together each morning in parks around the word.

Near my office, you can often find a group of women practising tai-chi (combined with some form of meditation) using a portable music player. It is quite interesting to observe them.

Tai-chi is believed to promote balance control, flexibility and cardiovascular fitness and reduce the risk of falls, pains, stress and anxiety. It is also believed to improve cardiovascular and respiratory function.

On another level, "tai-chi" is a pseudonym used when a person does not do his/her fair share of work and pushes his / her duties to others in his / her group / team / department or worse still, persons in other groups / teams / departments. Such a phenomenon is very commonplace now and is happening even in school where we sometimes hear of children complaining that their teammates do not do their share of the work and they end up shouldering the bulk of the work in order to finish the school project. The burden is especially heavy on the person who is assigned the role of being coordinator - in carrying out his / her role, the person may have to push others to meet deadlines and sometimes make unpopular decisions. It is a thankless job but I guess someone has to do it.

As our society gets more and more affluent, it is unfortunate that such "tai-chi" behaviour is getting more predominant. Parents are sometimes to blame because they are so eager for their children to be ahead in the rat race that they sometimes openly or inadvertently encourage their children to do only things that benefit themselves and to push away to others work that they deem unimportant or something that does not aid in their climb to the top of the ladder. What sort of adults will these children grow up to be?

Let us take one step back and reflect. We are all here on a temporal basis. You may be "one up" on your teammate today by tai-chi-ing your work to him / her but do not forget that what goes round, comes round.