Sense and Simplicity.

One of the many benefits of not being a car owner in Boston, besides not having to deal with downright nightmarish parking issues, is that I get to plan my walking route through the Boston Common Mall. It's far from the likes of a typical shopping mall, rather it's an outdoor promenade of sorts in the middle of one of the most historic streets in ol' Beantown (I also happen to live in this street, not that I'm biased). The breathtaking lights that are strung upon the trees that line the 'mall' make the Northeast winters not only bearable, but downright pretty. Yeah, I said it.

My favorite part about said mall, besides the lights, is everything I get to see happening from Arlington to Hereford (the streets are lined alphabetically; you do the math). More specifically, I love seeing kids pouncing around in the snow, frolicking and tossing snowballs and being totally carefree. Then there's the dogs. Ah, the dogs. I love how they somehow walk their owners. I love how they run through the snow chasing the most basic things: bags, dirt, their tails.

I know you're waiting...with baited breath, I'm sure, for how this remotely relates to fitness.

Here's what I was thinking this morning as I simultaneously watched a dog wrestle with an empty bag of potato chips and saw a 4-year old nearly take out his little brother with a snowball: it doesn't take a lot of thinking to exercise.

Now, we're not dogs and we're certainly not children, but think about it; if we aren't concentrating on how much we hate exercise, or how we're just too damn busy, or how much we'd rather just sit and have a cocktail, and instead consider it just an advanced form of simple movement, wouldn't it be easier to get it done?

There's no emotion attached to exercise. Our heart, arteries, muscles and fat don't actually hate us if we do or don't miss a workout. They just respond to it, one way or another...by clogging or not clogging, by shrinking or not shrinking, by growing or not growing. Our bodies are machines. What processes the emotions is the brain. Look at children -- they run and play and fall and jump until they're all sorts of tired, and while I realize their energy level seems boundless compared to ours, it is that simple, unabashed want and need to just move that is so admirable.

So the next time you're sitting in your office, on your couch, in your car, or in a meeting and your debating whether or not to exercise, think about a child you know. What is their response when you tell them it's time to "go outside and play"? Do you get a fight? Do they even think twice about lacing up their sneakers and jetting out the door?

Take the thinking out of it. You think enough.

Keep Climbing,
ELD