Okay, so it’s been about five million years since my last blog post… and even though I’m six days away from this humungous oral exam and in the middle of finals, ergo really in the middle of stressing myself with ideas about the time (I do but think) I don't have… I will take the time to write this post.
Before I got into a workout groove (a couple of years ago), my ideas about time were one of the biggest setbacks to committing to losing weight. Sure, I WANTED to lose weight… but where was the time? Now of course, I managed to find time to marathon all five seasons of The Wire while school was in session… I found time to develop, exhaust and quit various fads, activities, addictions. But when it came to eating right and working out… well I was kind of busy… and with all the school commitments, where was the time?
Well, it turns out time was there… on my lap… under my pillow… behind that 30 minutes of early morning facebooking… time was always there, even in my busiest moments. Time spent worrying about running out of time was time I could spend running. Because it turns out twenty-four hours is an ample amount of time, and so long as I budget it wisely (not wait until the last minute before working on something etc.), I had time. I have time. So even though I’ve been all stressed and unable to convince myself that I could take the little time to write a blog post, I’ve found the time to continue to work out and take care of my body.
Because all this time I, one, we have is ultimately time we don’t have. It’s convenient to plan to be better next time, soon, tomorrow, next term, next quarter, in the New Year, in the new millennium, any time but now… but now is what I know I have. So now is when I do it. In these two and a half months since my dad died, I’ve been filled with an overwhelming desire to quit deferring the living of life (which at times, funnily enough, translated into complete stagnancy… I couldn’t quite figure out what constituted living my life to the fullest). Because as one friend who lost her mum put it… and I borrow her words because I really couldn’t say it any better: “I found that I was living and loving as hard as I could because I wanted to be proud of myself- full of the certainty that if I was as whole a person as I could be, I wasn't wasting what she had stolen from her - life.”
This thing called life… this thing called my body… I live them now, not tomorrow, not in the New Year.
Give yourself time. Take it. Hell, steal it if you have to. Time is now.
And even when it doesn’t feel like it, ultimately, time––like your body––is yours alone.
this cartoon is unnecessarily morbid, but cracked me up anyway...
Ha ha ha, the cartoon at the bottom is pretty funny. It's true that exercise takes time. The kind that makes a difference at least. They say it has to be aerobic for at least 30 to 40 minutes. Going to the gym, working out, showering and coming back to work is about a 2 hour commitment each day. That said though, unless you are a single mother of 2 year old sextuptlets, a lot more people could squeeze it in I know. I think its less about not having time, but knowing that when there is free time it is not to be wasted on a freaking treadmill. People would rather spend their time doing something more fun.
ReplyDeleteHahahaha- good point (i guess, i'm part of the minority that find a treadmill to be a rocking good time, lol). But depending on whether you're trying to lose weight for aesthetic reasons, or for health reasons... those two hours a day could save you 15% or more on car insurance... what? no... I mean, it could give you less time at the doctor's office, longer on the dance floor, more time for more fun. That being said, there are many other ways to get a good workout in while being social and not living a completely sedentary lifestyle (from a perfectly obnoxious outdoorsy sporting hobby to planting and harvesting crops in a village with some upcountry relatives)... there are ways.
ReplyDeletelove it, thank you for the inspiration, Aida.
ReplyDelete