I don't make a secret of the fact that I can't stand exercise. It makes me miserable, pure and simple. I don't mind exercise in disguise, which some people call tennis or two-hand-touch-football or ultimate frisbee. As long as I have something else to distract me, I can forget for a few moments that running, jumping and making my heart beat quicker aren't a) fun, or b) any fun at all.
What is it about exercising that so many people seem to like? Runners especially! Every runner I have ever seen seems to be having the most miserable time of their life. They are red and sweating, their clothes are hanging funny all over them, they can't get water in their mouth accurately, and they have horrible, painful grimaces on their face. When I ask runners how and why they run, they say "It's not so bad after you get used to it. It feels good to push yourself." True, or I could take a razor blade and run it in between my toes every day, really push myself, and maybe eventually it won't hurt so badly.
I need to do some kind of physical activity though, but I feel so dumb that I have to think about it, and even dumber that I am considering paying for it by signing up for a gym membership. Feeling dumb makes me wish I lived some place, some time, where "exercise" wasn't ever thought of; I would just do my daily activities and get physical activity in the process. The idea of a gym is grimly amusing to me, for one because I would be paying money to be in misery. Plus, if you think about it, it's pretty silly to pay for something as free as exercise. And it's hard to get excited about hanging out in a shrine to a pampered, overfed, sedentary culture where most people (um, myself included) will accidentally get too fat if they don't go and burn it off on purpose.
There is also a great, delicious irony here. So many of us have these easy-peasy lives now, with desk jobs and automatic everything. We are told these are improvements (and of course, many are). Except that now, because all our hard work is done by machines, we have to spend time in the gym on a different kind of machine, sweating away the extra time we've been given by technological and industrial advances. It's hard to beat that for irony, eh?
