For the first time in a couple years, I participated in a lesson at the gym. It was only a half hour flexibility session, but I was pretty sweaty after. Unlike many men, I do stretch, but I am not very good at pushing myself hard enough, so having it guided helps.
After the class I was having a chat with the trainer about the many, many gyms in the city (who I have been chatting with for the last few months on and off about life and business) and asked her a question.
How can there be so many gyms and gym types in this city, but most people are still out of shape?
Of course, I know the answer to this question, as did she. But it was interesting to consider that in a city of about 300K people and at least 200 gyms and fitness centres, not to mention all the other types of sports centres, tennis and padel, and martial arts places and similar - there should be a lot of fit people. After all, for these places to survive, they must have members. Sure, there will be some overlaps here and there where one person is subscribed to more than one activity, but there are a lot of gyms.
I suspect it is much like most subscriptions many of us have, where we overvalue the value it brings to us. For a gym, there is probably also the feeling derived from being a member, of actually getting some benefit from it - even when it isn't being used. In that sense, it might be a bit like a Ferrari, where the power can't (legally) be utilised on the roads, but just having it there makes people feel special.
I don't expect everyone to walk around like it is the set of Baywatch, but I do think that we are failing as a society to build the kind of environment that keeps us healthy. Exercise is just one aspect of it, as there is nutrition as well as mental and social health also, but all of these things tie into together. I don't think it is a surprise at all that the more physically unhealthy we get as a society, the more other problems we are going to have. And all these little misalignments add up to far greater issues, as they compound against each other.
There is not just one factor holding us back, there are many. But most of us still have the treatments we each need available to us - at least for the basics. Yet, like the apparent gym memberships, we do not utilise our resources well. We spend a lot to have access and spend a lot of time accessing, but what we are accessing and what we do with that information after doesn't seem to be getting used to improve ourselves. For the most part, it is just entertainment to pass the time.
We might not be quite there yet, but we are heading in the direction of the humans in the movie Wall-E, fed like cows, unable to carry our own weight. It isn't just the food we put in our mouths, but also what we put into our minds and our emotional centres. We are filling ourselves with garbage and well, garbage in, garbage out.
It is always easy to come up with excuses for our behaviour, but if we aren't getting the results from life doing what we are doing, I guess we have to change what we are doing. Because while the world is constantly changing, it is unlikely to arrange itself to create the environment we each need for a good life.
Part of culture today is being subscribed to have access, but what are we accessing? Is it actually helping us meet our daily goals, or is it just another façade we are using to cover an uncomfortable truth?
Taraz
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