get on up

In quasi-lunar cycles I remind myself that exercise is like food. Going on Spring Break three days ago facilitated the resumption of this daily need; I went to the gym. Thought nothing of being there… mounted the elliptical with the best view of the MIT pools below, fussed with the sad plastic boxes that connect you to one of six different tvs or uninspiring satellite stations, spaced out for a good 10 minutes before I noticed that 20 people dressed in full fatigues and sneakers were jumping into the pool holding machine guns. A luckier handful were standing on the five meter platform with black knit caps pulled over their faces, their instructors describing to them exactly where the edge of the concrete was. No one else was watching on my side of the glass, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the gap between these routines: our earnest but luxurious exercise, their terrifying and inconsonant training. All of us pushing ourselves beyond what desks and cars require, all of us compelled by internal or external drill sergeants. Harder to say if any one of us enjoyed what we were doing.

Those of us who seek that simplest kind of locomotion do so for reasons ranging from the most practical to the hedonistic. A vestige of chasing our food, perhaps, the stirring that acknowledges the necessity of action – and evidence of evolution, our need to swoosh and wriggle and jump and careen. We’re so committed that we hurt ourselves to keep going. I thought about that briefly while watching Jiri Kylian’s improbably wonderful ballet ‘Black and White’ . The audience remains captivated in the ease and flow of what these dancers convey; we hardly contemplate the strains and bruises that carried them to the stage.

One could argue that regardless of the venue, we’re driven to measure our motility’s worth. Heart rates raised, dunks slammed, moguls conquered, opponents thrown: the push and pull between play and ambition.
You could blame it on our capitalist values, or our type-A programming - or an innocent misunderstanding.
Fell in love with surfing in Hawaii last August, and proceeded to employ my typical m.o. to getting that “done”. That works until the ocean reminds you that little comes from struggling with weather and waves, and if every day is going to be a good day, you might as well plan at the last minute, give up all expectations and have fun every possible second you're out there.

I promise to yield to the mountains I’m about to meet: Gerry Lopez inspired me to take full advantage of my New England home and go snowboarding while our Atlantic waters warm (piss poor googling booty on video of Lopez snowboarding, but if you find some let me know…). No matter the terrain, I wonder if we love it all for the chance to let our brains be guided by our bodies. They teach our thoughts how the balance between making happen and letting go really works. They're efficient, free (arguably), and wiser than we know. And they might even be happier when we let them loose on the world.