All in Happiness
The Problem with Exercise (and everything)
In the years since I was drilled between the eyes with this great dilemma, I have physically grown a half-inch; lengthening and strengthening my spine enough to finally measure that nice, even 75 inches my pediatrician promised me when I was 12. This journey has taken the better part of four years and to be quite honest, has been truly absurd. Yet the difficulty of what I have accomplished and the work required to make it so, has given me a gift way greater than anything physical ever could. It has ruptured my sense of normal to the point where I know—there is no such thing.
Why I Take Cold Showers
My story goes something like this:
I was a Personal Trainer with a defunct body. I was aesthetically fit; endowed with “abs” from a regimen of eating mediocrely, lifting weights (with bad form), running, and the benefit of youth. But at age 24, the observance of chronic lower-back and shoulder pain necessitated my first application of The Life Method:
Question: Do I have absolutely no idea what it means to be healthy?
Test: Takes a Pilates class
Observation: Gets shown up by 50 year-old women
Feedback: Not happy about the observation—pretends event never happened
Result: Keeps injuring lower-back
How to Fitness Pt. 1
Yet, being healthy is not just something you start doing because you suddenly have loads of free time. It can certainly start that way, but as anyone who has had their motivation to get fit this quarantine sapped by an infatuation with Joe Exotic can attest, hoping and doing are not one in the same.
