The Wall and the Empty Fridge: On Finding Focus Through Constraints

I've been going to this calisthenics gym Daily Cal in Sheung Wan for the past couple of months. The reason? I wanted to do more bodyweight movements like muscle-ups and handstands. As much as men brag about how much they can lift, I've always thought the most impressive ones were the elderly Chinese grandpas who could do calisthenic movements that a seasoned lifter could only dream of. Because in a practice like calisthenics, it's about how much you can control in relation to your body mass. You're not trying to outlift someone; you're trying to optimize how much you can endure in relation to your existing body weight.

It also puts you in some unexpected places. After a couple weeks of practice, I was finally able to kick up into a handstand (with the coach's help, of course). First, you kick up against the wall, hoisting your legs like inverted tree trunks, and ever so slightly, kick off against the wall. With the coach's help, you straighten out your legs so you can finally experience life from an inverted plane.

The key point here is the wall. You need to be able to kick up to the wall first and then slowly, in relation to the wall, prop yourself up into a handstand. Those grandpas in the park figured this out decades ago: once you master one task, you can easily master others.

As it turns out, people who are really good at one thing tend to be good at multiple things as well, because if you can focus on one thing long enough to get good at it, you can focus long enough on another thing to be good at that as well.

With modern life in 2025, it's too easy to get distracted all the time, never allowing yourself the boredom or the space to just physically focus on something. It's too easy with the notifications, the news feeds, the email reminders, the ambient noise to be sidetracked and not even do what you intended to do when you picked up your phone 15 minutes ago.

The handstand against the wall teaches you something fundamental: you need a constraint, a boundary, something solid to push against before you can stand free. The wall isn't a crutch—it's the necessary first step toward independence.

We're about seven days from Turkey Day, and it's almost game time for those of you who celebrate overstuffing yourself. And here's where I realized the wall principle applies everywhere: I don't think I have anything to add to the thousands of Thanksgiving recipes already out there, but perhaps I can offer some insight on how constraints create focus.

For me, a lot about cooking is about taking away things instead of adding things, and this has never been truer than when preparing for Thanksgiving. The first thing I do is clear the fridge. There's something to be said about making enough room in the fridge so that when you do need to brine a turkey for 48-72 hours, you aren't jamming sauce jars on top of each other and wondering why you ended up buying so many different versions of mustards that you only use once.

It's the same principle as the wall—you need a clear, defined space before you can create anything meaningful.

Less is more, as the Decluttering Queen, Marie Kondo, would preach.

Well, Ms. Kondo, I would rather have fewer varieties of mustard and a cleaner headspace, so you ended up being right after all. This philosophy of clearing out your fridge also applies to dishware and kitchenware. As I'm decluttering, I realize I have multiple utensils I've never used (purely for a photo shoot one time, not at all practical), can openers that don't really work, and those gadgets you buy at Daiso thinking you'll need them, but as it turns out, they're useless. I had this metal clamp thing that was supposed to help carry hot dishes out of the steamer, but never used it once—I might as well just use a towel, since I always have my hands and I always have a towel.

I do feel a lot better after decluttering my cabinet though. I feel lighter, the drawers are less full, more breathing room, and I can finally find that one juicer I always use instead of having to clamber through three others that I never touched. Like a calisthenics coach taking away his support so the student could hand stand on their own, its the removal of something that reveals the potential of what is already there.

Maybe that's what those grandpas in the park understood all along: mastery isn't accumulation, it's subtraction. They're not adding more equipment, more complexity, or more technique. In the end, it's just you, the wall, and whatever's already there waiting to be revealed.

The wall teaches you where you are. The empty fridge shows you what you need. Both remind you that focus isn't about doing more—it's about removing everything that isn't essential until you can finally see clearly, even if you're looking at the world upside down.

What needs to be removed before you can finally see what's already there?

Savoring this moment with you,

Kevin L