Fitness & Self-Image

The pandemic proportions of the visual phenomena and the fact that it even affects society’s most intelligent members is fascinating to me.  And I wish that I could claim to be above it, but I cannot.   Of course the visual is our first-line mechanism for determining objective reality, and that’s fine, but the importance placed on individual personal appearance by the populace of most modern societies seems to exceed basic instinct – perhaps exacerbated by the fact that the phenomena is artificially driven by various industries through the sundry vehicles of mass media.

It would be one thing if it were a health inspired issue, but appearance seems to be the driving force behind the trend toward a leaner collective.  However, though the popularity of the appearance of physical fitness is almost ubiquitous, actually managing the body image through fitness is still limited to a small minority.  So we are a society of corpulent constituents at one end of the physical spectrum (35.7% of the U.S. population is obese according to the CDC), about 13% physically fit at the other, and a majority of fitness want-to-be's in-between.  I like to think of myself as falling in the 13% camp of the fitness freaks, but my midsection measurement vetoes that illusion daily.

Sometimes the energy required to engage in my daily duties wears me down.  The simplicity of the mountain beckons me and I must obey – otherwise the emotive residuals gathered over the week will fester into something dark and ugly.  So as with Alice and her looking glass, I step through to the other side to share stories with the Walrus about many important things, but not cabbages or kings, and least of all what my workout routine for the day is going to include.  And the darkness of procrastination will wash over me as it so often does – and I will languish to return renewed on another day.  But I digress and ramble apparently.

It is very late.  And I am obviously near delirium.  But the condition of sleep mercilessly evades me (again).  It is my own fault – as mentioned I have been remiss in my exercise regimen, steeped in procrastination – so much that I can hardly call it a regimen.  So my mind, fueled by excess blood sugar, continues to process late at night despite my having clicked ‘shutdown’.  Hopefully the weekend adventures will rekindle the workout energy and hopefully the following week’s daily toil will not drain me of the energy needed to climb onto the stairway to nowhere (Stairmaster®) to fully engage in my imaginary fitness fanaticism.