FOR THE LOVE OF MOVEMENT.

When I was in high school, all I cared about was movement.

I had been training Kung Fu for years, and began teaching myself parkour, freerunning, and breaking. I practiced rigorously, and learning new tricks became my sole obsession.

I was imbued with a distinct feeling of the pure love I had for movement, and that nothing else mattered.

This was borne of a philosophy I had developed: that everything else in life comes and goes and can be taken away from me besides who I am and what I can do.

I clearly recall one thought I had during this time. For the moment, movement was my only care in the world. Unlike my peers, I did not care about clothes, girls, or money, though I knew one day this would all change. So I made a mental note that no matter what, to never lose the purity of the love I had for movement, even when other factors came into the equation.

Though I did not know by what means it would come about, I understood, even back then, that movement would be my golden ticket. I knew that as time went on, I would begin to care about other things, but also had the sense that they would all come about through movement itself.

Then, after high school, I went to NYU. I became a street dancer in Times Square, driven by an obsession with dance. Merging the soul of music, my love of movement, and a direct access point to the heart of the culture of the greatest city in America, my passion was white hot, and again, I cared for nothing else.

I did not care to make friends in school, or to attend to my studies. All I did with my life was eat as healthy as I could at the dining halls, train at gyms throughout the city, practice flipping and dancing at parks and studios, and street perform in Times Square.

I did make one friend though. His name was Danny, and he was a dancer that lived in the same dorm as me. While I was a b-boy with a flashy, dynamic style, specializing in flips, blowups, and crowd-pleasers, his style of dance focused on the intricate details of movement—popping, isolations, and doing moves inspired by Michael Jackson.

Together, we won our dorm’s talent show, and represented our dorm at NYU’s annual talent show on stage: UVL. Though we didn’t win, the university page posted a picture of me dancing on the front of their Instagram.

Still, I felt conflicted living a double life, divided between school and the streets. I felt an affinity with Spider-Man, who by day was a regular school student, and by night was effectively doing parkour in none other than New York City.

I developed another philosophy during this time: that society was an artificial structure that pressured you to conform to its constraints, and that the natural, limitless movement of the human body was my rebellion against it. I vouched to never let the pressure quell this spirit.

Fast forward to now.

I am 25. I am now a full time street dancer, traveling and doing shows year round. Since New York, I have done shows in Venice Beach, Santa Monica, New Orleans, Hawaii, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas.

I have gone viral on TikTok for dancing and doing flips, amassing millions of views and forty seven thousand followers. I now want to go viral on all social media platforms, monetize them, and get brand deals.

I do care about clothes, girls, and money like I thought I would, but I shelve these desires for the most part by hyperfixating on movement, knowing it will give me everything I want.

My ambitions, goals, and interests have also broadened. I want to be a great showman, to gain a wide variation of skills, to start companies, to learn, grow, and develop myself holistically, to sharpen my mind and tongue, to connect to God and others, to prepare myself for the future, to create art, to document my life, to become rich and famous, and to be cemented as a cultural touchstone so that my prime years of peak physical performance will be immortalized long after they are over.

However, movement remains the focus, the vehicle, and the centerpoint around which I structure my life. It provides the framework for everything else to fall into.

When I was in high school, I thought 25 would be my physical prime. Therefore, it was always the main benchmark I had set in my mind. I had dreams of what life at the age would look like—being a professional freerunner living in Los Angeles, sponsored by Tempest Freerunning, Red Bull, and GoPro.

Having now reached this point, though my life has panned out differently from this vision, I believe I have stayed the course, in principle, by continuing to develop my movement and making a living through it.

I am the best I have ever been, and believe my prime will last at least another decade—though optimistically, I am hoping for two. Though I have been training movement for twelve years, nearly half my life, I feel like I have just started.

That is because learning a new movement makes you feel brand new, and better than ever. It makes you feel free—free to do what you have never done, to be who you have never been.

The freedom I feel through movement is the greatest blessing I have ever experienced, and it permeates to all areas of my life. As I did in high school, I hope to never fall out of touch with the purity of this feeling for as long as I live.

This my story so far, and philosophies and principles I live by. I am Owen Lai and I dedicate this life to the love of movement.