Finding your reason to get up and get going in life
It’s the law, they can’t bury you if you are still moving. This used to be one of my favorite sayings to the older clients who started in our various fitness businesses. Most were tired, overweight, many years beyond anyone calling them fit, but they showed up, grinned, and tried when so many others refused to even walk in the door.
When I became that older guy in the gym, I realized I was missing a key thought when I used this old adage. The truth is you can be dead many years before anyone gets around to burying you. You can exercise your body, but that matters little if you don’t also force your brain to keep moving too. The body is upright, but the brain fades into mold, rotten from disuse and lack of a challenge.
My brother and I grew up in a small, working class town across the river from St. Louis in Southern Illinois. It’s one of those little villages where the three block downtown is dead and shuttered, the few local bars thrive as the only entertainment and places to eat in town, and where people grow old at least a decade before their time.
Visiting my brother is always a step into another life, the life I would have had if I hadn’t escaped when I was 19. I packed my duffel bag into my orange and black VW bug, painted as a lady bug of course — remember, it was the 70s — and there were several pot infused brownies involved in the creation of that paint job, then I drove to the gas station at the edge of town on the only highway in, took a right turn, and never looked back.
Nothing wrong with small town life, but to me, living in a land locked place a mile from where you were born shrinks your life and your soul. You live, work, drink, eat and die with the same people you have known since you were five years old.
