exercise

 

Rant mode activated.

I heard three people complain today about how they tried to work out but just couldn’t do it, or didn’t feel like going to the gym, and and how they wish they could just close their eyes, wake up and the exercise portion of the day was done. One even complained that she didn’t want to ruin her hair. Each time, I bit my tongue and mentally shook my head, telling myself everyone has their own story. Truth is, it peeves me off to hear people complain about “having” to move. You don’t have to move, you get to move. Some people don’t have this privilege. Some people can’t play the sports they love anymore, or push their bodies and feel the joy in their physical strength, or the high one gets from a good workout. I know people who’ve had the sports they love taken from them, people who work their butts off to protect their bodies from injury so they can keep moving, people who wish they could push their bodies and can’t.

I am one of those people.

Just over two years ago I  had to stop lifting, climbing, even cut down on intense yoga, due to some health challenges. Nothing is broken, but exercise does more harm than good at this point.

I discovered the joy of exercise when I was nineteen after my first heart break. It helped me heal a badly broken heart and I never looked back. I never stopped moving since. I felt proud and privileged of the physical strength I had, the flexibility I developed, the way I could push my own limits day by day. I never felt like it was burden to move. And now it feels like a burden not to move.

Some people don’t have legs. They have never felt the thrill of a good run, or worse, long to feel the thrill again, even if just or one more time. This is what I tell myself when I feel like complaining because I want push my body the way I used to. I have something, and I am going to appreciate it.

There are people who are fighting for their lives. Right now. Some of them are people I care about.

Some things are certain in life; taxes, death and old age. Don’t waste the beauty of the physical machine that you have feeling like it’s a burden to keep it well oiled and maintained. There will come a time in your life when movement will not be so accessible to you. You will age and this will slow you down. That’s a done deal.

You. Are. Privileged.

Act like you know that. Now. Don’t take yourself for granted and if you choose to, at least don’t complain about it. Your hair can be wait. Your body can’t.

Some of us actually love our bodies and the magic that lies within them.

Rant over.

Qღ