Last week I wrote about fitness and health, and I am committed to not turning this blog into a single-issue platform, and at the same time there are ongoing topics that strike chords with people and also that remain on my mind. The topic fitness is one such topic. Most, if not all of us, struggle with our health. Wether we have large intractable diagnoses or smaller issues, health is tough and ongoing.
I read something in a christian book that made me blink last year and the implications of it just dropped for me. It is Ruth Haley Barton writing on the experience of Elijah. All you really need to know about him for the purposes of this quote is that he was a prophet and as prophets tend to do he cheesed a lot of people off, this made his life harder than it needed to be, and eventually he became despairing and God met him in his despair and the first thing God did was provide food and water. Barton says of the story:
We don’t always think of caring for the body as a part of our spiritual practice, but the story of Elijah confirms that many times this is where it all begins…It can be hard and humbling to pay attention to your body, whatever state it is in, because it brings you face to face with your finiteness, your vulnerability. (Ruth Haley Barton)
Forget the spirituality and the hope of spiritual growth she is aiming at for a moment.
Is it true that when we think about our fitness, or lack thereof, it reminds us more of our finiteness than anything else?
That sort of makes sense to me, like how I hear of a man running a sub 2 hour marathon and shake my head and think about how long a marathon takes. See? I turn an amazing feat into a heightened awareness of my own limits. I am not alone in this: a friend I told about the marathon record replied, “That is incredible. But makes me sad and want to eat a pint of ice cream. 🙁“
Does the bulge of our extra weight counterintuitively make us feel small because it reminds us of our finite number of days?
Do we avoid healthy practices because something deep inside us associates them with our inevitable deaths?
I have known people for whom every sign of decline is faced angrily, for others it is received as an insult, mostly people seem to admit it as proof that their time is running out.
Strangely, many of the happiest places on earth are places where death is confronted regularly. Sometimes because they are poor and death happens more frequently and they learn quickly to make the most out of life and be grateful for what they do have. Sometimes, like in Bhutan with its famous happiness index (look it up if you don’t know about it), because they practice memento mori, something like those old skulls poets would have on their desks to remind them life is short and to write while the iron is hot.
Here’s the thing, if life is short then we must make the most of it. We must wring out of it every once of joy we can find.
If life is short we must treat it as precious, rarity being one of the chief defining traits of that which is valuable in our eyes.
Let us then be humbled by the state of our bodies and ask if we are really and honestly making the most of our one chance at this.
For example, I read that some astronauts are upset about the recent Artemis flight because it was deemed to have a 1/20 chance of failure and that is generally considered too high a chance and the astronauts were being irresponsible but accepting it. At the very same time, those astronauts knew that in all probability if they had to wait a year or two or five to make the odds better then the odds of them being on the flight would decrease…making the mission worthwhile to them at 1/20. They were aware of their finiteness and it lead them to live large.
The point is, we need to both take our finitude seriously and also make the most of it while we have it.
Jesus said he came that we would have life and have it abundantly, I think he had more in mind than whatever cheap buffet gets us salivating or passive entertainment keeps us staring at our devices.
Maybe if working out reminds us of our looming deaths, then the solution comes back to something I wrote last week: find an activity that brings you joy. Watching my three boys I notice that children do not play games to stay fit, they race because racing is fun, they climb because climbing is fun, they swim because water feels cool and jumping off diving boards is exhilarating, they race bikes for the thrill of speed and or legs pumping and blood flowing, they try crazy soccer moves because they want to know what will happen, they wrestle because the push and pull satisfies something deep. They find so many activities they love to do for their own sake that they end up fit!
What about us adults?
I watched a video about photography by a retired gentleman (First notice this old guy is making Youtube videos!), in it he said he loves photography as a hobby, in and of itself, for its own satisfactions. Then, as a byproduct, he noticed that his clothes fit better than before. He realized it was because having this hobby we had quadrupled his daily step count (always being out looking for great compositions he moves around a lot more). His joyful and soul-satisfying hobby helped his body.
A person I know recently adopted a small dog, it has nearly quadrupled her step count overnight! And while that was part of the goal, surely the love, affection, and fun of the pup are high value propositions to her. Any health gains would be a byproduct.
I wonder if you know anyone that got into cooking, making whole-food based meals, loving the kitchen, the smells, the heat, the process of learning, the tasting of culinary delights from all over the world…and they got fitter by eating because they were eating more cleanly.
The fact is our bodies are vulnerable, most of us will admit they are not in the condition we wish they would be in, but the way forward might not be to attack health head on, for many of us it may well be to find a hobby, any hobby with the potential to get us moving around more, and see what happens.
Don’t beat yourself up over the state or shape of your body, just get out there and do something you find fun, life is too short not to.
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