When I was younger, I worked out competitively. That is, I worked out to be bigger and stronger.
These days, that doesn’t happen like it used to. “So why make the effort?” I sometimes ask myself when I’m driving to the gym. What’s the point?
The answer is, I enjoy it. It has required a mental recalibration from lifting for results to lifting as a simple ritual that helps order my life. It becomes more about rhythm and respite than muscles and steel. It becomes more of an internal pursuit focused in the mind, or perhaps even the soul, than in the blood coursing through the body.
I heard a long time ago, when I was too young to give it much thought, that one of the secrets of aging well is learning to change how we approach things. Whether I am aging well, I’ll leave for others to decide. But the fact that joy is still to be found in the midst of the aging process, even if sometimes in different places, is something of which I’m quite certain.
That's why I like yoga. (Which is where I'm headed shortly!)
Posted by: jan | January 17, 2008 at 06:35 PM