Running to the Back
By the time my brother was in his mid-fifties the best description of him was “a portly gentleman.” Like most people these days he had a sedentary job and a sedentary lifestyle. He was a skilled regional table-tennis champion and regarded that as serious exercise. Until the day he went up the short flight of stairs in his home and discovered he was out of breath.
Within a week he signed up with a local running club. A year later, he ran his first marathon. This year he’s aiming for 12:12, which is twelve marathons in twelve months. His health is greatly improved and his self-confidence has never been higher. He will turn 60 in a far happier and healthier condition than when he was twenty years younger.
My son was a timid child, afraid of failure and deeply lacking in self-confidence. During High School he decided to get a grip on his life and volunteered for various clubs including Chess, Mock Trial, and Cross-Country. He started accompanying me to the gym and we took up Krav Maga together. Today he’s a confident and thoughtful young man, an ultra-runner in superb physical condition, and cooks all his own meals from healthy ingredients. He is a mentor for others when requested, and is eager for new challenges.
For both of these family members, exercise opened up a new world.
It’s easy to forget in our modern world of conveniences and canned entertainment that we evolved to be active on a daily basis. It’s easy to forget that we used to connect with each other constantly. For both my brother and my son, their physical activities are also social activities. The benefits are physical, emotional, and intellectual.
We simply don’t get these things from sitting in a cubicle all day and then slumping in front of Netflix until we can’t keep our eyes open any longer.
I constantly hear people bemoaning the fact they “don’t have time” to look after themselves. But we all have precisely the same amount of time.
The difference is in how we spend it. It’s actually not obligatory for us to be slaves to our phones, responding to every incoming alert. It’s not compulsory for us to spend hours staring at a screen in the hope of distracting ourselves from the fact we hate our lives. It’s not written into law that we have to drive 7/10ths of a mile to the…
