I quit today. It was a gut retching, battle to the death, stare-down at High Noon. A icky, full of loss and change and possibility, ness. But I did it, stood my ground. Cold turkey.*

And so, here I sit. With a big gaping hole in my identity, wondering if something with so much unsureness around it could be right, feeling full of limitless possibility and unbearable responsibility.

I quit the gym.

<cue crickets chirping with incredulity>

Yes, you heard me right. It’s kind of a big deal! 

Somewhere around November of 1998, I suddenly decided my life was incomplete. 

I needed to join a gym. I needed to be someone who goes to a gym. One of THEM.

(Notice I didn’t say anything about exercise or health…). 

I’ve had continuous gym memberships since that day, including a year spent abroad in college and the time I was unemployed for 6 months. I’ve been a member of the same Big Name gym since 2004.

I was Someone Who Goes to the Gym.

It can be pretty great being Someone Who Goes to the Gym because if you go to the gym, you know who you are. Or, at least, who you’re supposed to be. It’s an easy, pre-packaged identity- with it’s own set of expectations, behaviors and beliefs. If you go to the gym, you don’t have to think about a whole host of other things: what might be a joyful-truly-you way to spend your Saturday morning, what type of movement resonates with your body and spirit, what type of foods fill you up and make you passionate about life, perhaps even who you would like to spend your time with. Those things sound nice, but they’re also full of hard&scary. 

Bonus! Who You Should Be canned  free! with membership.

Buyer beware - You, like me, might be purchasing the privilege of not having to be with yourself overly much…

For instance, if you’re someone who goes to the gym, it goes without saying that you are someone who thinks about food in a certain… way. Perhaps you obsesses about what you eat - eating healthfully, not healthfully enough, feeling guilty about not eating healthfully enough, wondering what healthful even means, wondering if you are doing it better or worse than the person on the treadmill next to you. You read well worn (and germy!) copies of Shape, Fitness and Women’s Health and, if you go regularly enough, you absorb the Fad Diet of the Week. You feel like you never entirely grasp what exactly you should be eating, but you know you’re not there yet, and you know you need to keep trying. You won’t ever have to the time to stop and think about what resonates with your body because your head is entirely too full of all this other stuff, because you are Someone Who Goes To The Gym.

You don’t have to spend any time with your body. You don’t have to face your fears.

When was the last time you really listened to your body? (Ehem. Ladies?) If you go to the gym, all that is taken care of for you. You’ve done your duty, can check “body” off the list for a day or two. No need to do any of that wacky meditation/listening/sitting with yourself mumbo jumbo. You go to the gym. You’re doing all you can, you have fulfilled your responsibility to yourself and society. You are not lazy. 

It was a good run, those 10 years or so. Gave me what I needed for many years and kept me reasonably fit. And, then, one day it occurred to me…

I hate going to the gym. 

I don’t hate exercise. I hate the gym. It might be one way to care for my body, but every physical benefit reaped by going to the gym and being Someone Who Goes to the Gym was offset by the crushing, malarial effect it had on my spirit and overall well being. It’s loud, dirty, overly bright, isolating, full of expectation and artificial in every way. Really. If you think about it, the only natural element inside a gym is the water coming out of the showers. 

I can simply no longer bare to spend 7-10 hours a week trapped inside a giant box breathing an elixir of not-my-sweat and chemicals, running nowhere while watching CNN, having hip hop pumped into my ears at a jarring volume and stuffing my face with little vitamin turds and radioactive colored water. 

It’s offensive to every single one of my senses simultaneously and I refuse to accept that this is what I must submit to for health. 

I mean, seriously? What happened to us? 

Does anyone else see the absurdity in climbing 40 flights of stairs and going absolutely nowhere? It’s just weird! What happened to the time when we used our bodies in the natural course of life? What happened to the time when we had time to live?

I desperately want a more authentic experience of life. The way I spend my time, the way I choose to honor my health and beingness have a tremendous impact on this experience. So here I am. A quitter. And it feels awfully lonely at the moment.

It feels like anything I could do outside of the gym could not possibly be enough. I’m still just a bit attached to the idea that gym=rightness, Enough, etc. Most of us live so deeply intrenched in 20th century artificial efficiency that good old fashioned living just seems, well, unnatural. I’m releasing, but definitely not exempt from that mindset. 

So now, I am Someone Who…

Has the opportunity to do a whole lot of thinking about exactly how I want this authentic thing to go. Who is creating and stumbling and listening. Who is simplifying.

It’s a lot of exciting and a lot of responsibility. Responsibility for my health. I can no longer just do my civic duty by going to the gym and call it a day (not that that was actually working before, but the illusion was awesome). Responsibility for my joy. No more doing it because I should. Responsibility for the relationship between body and self.

Responsibility for creating my experience of life, health and well being. For living in alignment with my values (secret code word!!), rather than limply absorbing the status quo.

authentic life authentic life, fitness, life alignment, personal responsibility, simplifying, values