The really heavy stuff

I believe in lifting weights, but I draw the line at imaginary ones.  Let’s heft the real dumbbells in front of us, not the ones made of guilt or regret or whatever intangible but psychically heavy stuff.

Step in to the gym with me as a brand new person, created just this very minute.  Your ten-year-old self who could run for hours doesn’t exist.  Neither does your eighteen-year-old bathing beauty or your twenty-year-old running back, unless you are eighteen or twenty right now.  Even your last-year 50-pound-overweight self is gone, replaced by you, here, now.

The best workout you can do is the one that fully exhausts the body you inhabit today.  Some days, that body is stronger than others.  Some days, that body has a cold.  Some days, it’s a good idea to take out aggression on the weights instead of other targets; besides, the dog who sometimes has trouble distinguishing inside from outside doesn’t weigh very much.

Often, it turns out that dropping the psychic weights opens up the ability to lift the real ones.