Power of the Gym

When most people think about a writer hard at work, they imagine them sitting hunched over a desk, eyes unblinkingly squinting ahead, as they furiously clack away on a keyboard. But the truth is, the work of a writer begins long before that. I have come to realize, in fact, that writers actually work every minute of every day. We spend our lives as observers, intense feelers, and dreamers. We notice the dimples in the newly poured concrete sidewalks and think about how we can add that detail into the short story we’re working on. We soberly drown ourselves in the despair of a lost love because we know that fully feeling that loss is the only way we’ll ever be able to effectively write about loss. And we dream. We dream of the day when all of our words finally draw open everyone’s eyes fully to see us for who we really are without judgment or misconception.  Writers, perhaps, work longer and harder hours than anyone else on earth.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” 

For reasons unbeknownst to me, this quote popped into my head this morning at about 5:45 a.m. when I was lifting weights at the gym…..see what I mean about working 24/7! It comes from a sonnet written by Emma Lazarus and just so happens to be engraved on the pedestal that the Statue of Liberty stands on. It was completely random thought---and yet—it was fitting.

Right after my church and the Montana mountains, the gym is one of my holiest of sanctuaries. It’s where I get to disappear for an hour each morning and lose myself in the sweat and music pounding through my ear phones. It’s a place filled with all manner of sights, sounds and smells that are calming to me in ways only fellow gym rats can appreciate. There’s the fierce look in the runner’s eye as they pound out the miles on the treadmill even as the sweat trickles down. There’s the clanking noise of plates being transferred on and off weight machines. There’s the musty smell of sweat that lingers in the cycling room after a full class. The gym is full of determination, stubbornness, and hope.

In the outside world, things and relationships fall apart every day. At the gym, everything that is broken is slowly pieced back together again in a profoundly stronger way. While people frequently disappoint and abandon you in your personal life, the gym waits patiently for you to return to it each week. The only one you ever disappoint is yourself when you don’t show up for your workout. The gym doesn’t care if your hair is frizzy, you’re donning oversized sweats and all of the sun spots on your makeup-free face are exposed. The gym won’t judge you for being tired or thinking about other places…it’s just grateful you showed up and tried. When you’re all out of tears to shed, the gym draws sweat beads instead that rid the body of the weakness your sorrows wrought. The gym gives you back just as much, if not more, as you put into it. Tell me how many relationships you have where that happens?

I go to the gym five days a week whether I’m having a good week or a bad one because either way everything seems better and more possible by the time I leave. I go to the gym when I feel sick or weak. I may not run very fast and the weights I lift don’t add up to many pounds, but I’m always stronger on the inside even if it doesn’t reflect externally. 

Much like the Statue of Liberty, the gym calls to the tired, the poor, the wretched refuse and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.  Like immigrants, gym goers each bring with them their own unique stories and goals for a brighter future. But all of them, all of us, are all ultimately seeking the same thing—FREEDOM from the elements of life determined to weigh us down.