All in Life Notes
Everyday we're sold a million different things to make us happy—weight loss plans and body shapers, gold chains and rap albums, university degrees and successful careers, steamy sex lives and perfect lovers, gizmos and gadgets and thingamabobs galore. How many times have you heard
am a squat goddess. I dedicate myself to putting heavy ass weights on my back, squatting down, and standing back up. I’m also committed to picking heavy ass weights up off the floor, pushing heavy ass weights above my head, lunging across the gym with heavy ass weights, and so on and so forth. The heavier the weight, the better I feel about it. Ultimately, I’m devoted to, not only my health, but my strength, both mental and physical, and to the maintenance of a body that looks good and works well. Since I started training in August, I’ve noticed a lot of significant changes in my life. My body changed, but there’s a lot more to it than just bigger thighs and a rounder ass. I’ve changed as a person. For me, the gym is more than just a place to lift weights. The gym is a classroom, and I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons that apply long after I’ve put the weights down and changed out of my sweats. Here’s what the iron has taught me.
If you fell sick on the street today, what are the chances that someone would help you? From some of the things I’ve witnessed in recent months, I’m not too confident that I wouldn’t be left lying on cold Toronto pavement as people stepped over me. The days of Good Samaritans seems to be drawing to a disheartening end. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that this society’s new favourite words are “me,” “my,” “mine” and “I”. Many of us think of ourselves as individuals capable of being perfectly independent of everyone else. What a grand delusion.
Last week I was sitting on a full bus. A man in a wheelchair – not the motorized kind, but the ones you have to propel by hand – was getting off at a major intersection. As the driver lowered the ramp and the man rolled off, the light turned red. Not proud to say it, but I groaned, as I was in a hurry. From my seat in the back of the bus, I watched the man, slouching down in the chair, wearing a dirty motor jacket, open to show his large doughy belly, and a dingy baseball cap pulled down over his greasy long hair, back his wheelchair toward the turning lane. In disbelief, I watched helplessly as the man slowly rolled the chair off the curb, and toppled out on to the pavement.
