About gym

Sometimes I think about the sheer mechanics of staying alive, and it feels incredibly strange when you step back and look at it. Just to function normally and remain healthy, we have to force ourselves to move. We have to actively expend energy and burn through our body's resources just to keep the system running.

It feels as though our underlying biology is set up to make us suffer either way. If you exercise, you suffer in the moment—it is hard, boring, and exhausting; your heart rate spikes, you sweat, and you wear yourself out. But if you choose not to do it, you still suffer in the long run because your body eventually breaks down and gets sick. Ultimately, it just comes down to choosing between two different forms and degrees of suffering.

It is a strange realization to arrive at: that suffering is almost the default mode of existence. It might not always be the most prominent or visible part of our daily lives, but it feels like the baseline nonetheless.