Rock It

I made the mistake, back a long time ago, of asking who Sisyphus was, when he was referenced in whatever it was we were reading in French.  Stupid teachers who want you to learn things!  Off to the library I went (yes, this was before there was such a thing as the Internet, children), where I discovered not only Sisyphus but existentialism and other cheerful philosophies.  For those of you who have not had this life experience, I will summarize:  Sisyphus, due to his impressive ability to piss off the gods, was sentenced to roll a rock up a hill only to have it roll down again, over and over, for eternity.

 

No, this is not my new workout plan.

 

I am sharing this story because sometimes fitness feels like a punishment.  Every day, there’s that damn rock again and we are so tired of pushing it up that hill.  But, as we high school students discovered in our discussion of the story, there is one way for Sisyphus to escape his punishment:  to like rolling rocks.  Then it becomes:  every day I get to roll that rock.  The rock is the same.  What Sisyphus does all day is the same.  He just enjoys it.

 

Now, I am not saying that we need to slap a sunny attitude on a terrible thing.  Not at all.  What I am saying is that we need to figure out what kind of workout is a get to instead of a have to for us.  (Maybe some of us would like to roll rocks for a workout?  Probably not.)  If running, for example, is worse than an eternity rolling rocks, we can do something else every day, like swimming, or dancing, or, I don’t know, pogo-stick racing.

 

This might be mixing too many kinds of religious belief, but here’s a dose of Buddhist perspective:  pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.  The fitness version of that is:  sweat is essential, but the method can be fun.

 

Go play.