(no subject)
I just learned yet another new thing about myself today. Or maybe a series of new things.
I went to the gym to meet some people who, I thought, had agreed to meet me to walk around the indoor track there for a mile, which is about 9 laps. It’s possible that my signals were crossed somehow, or that something came up, and none of them had any way to contact me. Nobody showed up but me.
Anyway, there was this commitment to walk, so I walked. That’s the first of my list of Things Learned Today: I already know that if I commit to something, I’m going to do it, but I don’t honor commitments to myself as well as I honor ones made to other people. I never realized that commitment was an important part of the process before. I have to work on that, because I am serious about this fit and slender thing I’m doing.
It’s probably just as well that I walked by myself, too, for a few reasons, one being that I like to walk fast. The ladies I was meeting are all at least in their sixties, and while I’m not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger, (thank god) I would probably have been straining at the leash. As it was, I was going about 5 miles per hour, and I was into extra laps by a quarter after eleven.
I also had time for observation. Most of the way around the track, there are either windows to the outside, or openings onto the rest of the gym. It was like a Breughel painting: many little stations of interesting human interactions and determined movement going on wherever I looked. I loved the little glimpses I had on the way by.
I saw a morbidly obese man with a trainer lifting weights and grunting and sweating, then stopping to laugh. He looked like he was doing too much, but he wanted to be thin and strong and healthy YESTERDAY. He wasn’t complaining. I’ve seen him at the gym every time I’ve been there lately. I wish him luck and send energy. He deserves it.
I saw two men being given the grand tour. One was tall and thin and in his forties, and looked both worried and interested. His body language suggested that he’d go for whatever they asked of him. The older man, who appeared to be at least in his sixties, looked unnerved and resistant, but his body language was a big, “Maybe…” They looked like before and after images of the same person, so I suppose they were father and son.
I saw tiny, gray haired Asian ladies, scowling ferociously and lifting things that, normally, a son or grandson would have taken away from them. They were impressive as hell, and a good example to me.
I saw people arriving looking cross but determined in the parking lot, passing people looking tired but satisfied, going the other way. It’s a great contrast.
There was an older lady, skinny and strong, running past me on the track. She had a kind and knowing smile. I suspect that she was not always skinny and strong.
I took special notice of a tall, fat, middle-aged woman with a sheepish grin and a long-legged, loping walk and a long gray-and-brown ponytail who kept pace with me when I was passing the mirrors.
She’s getting thinner and stronger all the time.