Things that are Weird: Gyms

We live in America, the land of excess, the land of waste. Nothing provides greater evidence of this extreme lifestyle of wanton superfluity than the gym.

We have so much caloric energy in the United States (or even most of the world) that we are willing and able to waste it by performing pointless and repetitive tasks in an air-conditioned box. People run for miles on treadmills and go absolutely nowhere. They end up burning hundreds of calories an hour and all they’ve really done was read the lips of whatever CNN panel show was being played on the big screen.

Sometimes when I go out for a run, I pass a homeless person. The men and women sit on the sidewalk in tattered clothes trying their hardest to conserve energy. They don’t know when their next meal will be or how big or small it could be. They sit like withering flowers in the Washington heat as I whir[1] past.

Sure, there are tremendous health benefits to exercise, and not everyone goes to the gym just to burn calories.[2] But it is a bit like leaving a window open while the heater runs in the dead of winter because you’re getting too hot. We’ve got all this extra energy, so we’re just going to burn it off and let it dissipate uselessly into the ether.

Of course there really isn’t a better way of dealing with this. We can’t all be obese. There just aren’t enough of those Hoveround mobility scooters.

But it’s still weird, isn’t it? We have created meccas to consuming calories, calories that we don’t need, that our bodies can’t really use. And right next door, in the same strip mall, we’ve got shiny buildings filled with equipment meant to just burn all of those calories right away. It’s a socially acceptable bulimia.

Still, make sure to get at least 60 minutes of exercise a day.

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[1] Read as “hobble while gasping for air and clawing at a stitch in my side”

[2] Based on my observations, gymnasium are often used for talking on cellular devices or, depending on the time of year, as a setting for a particularly important mating ritual known as “flexing into a large mirror”