This is a passage that’s always been profound to me…
“We think we border our great paintings with luxurious, elaborate frames to glorify them, but we do it at least as much to insist to ourselves that the glory of the painting itself ends at the frame. That bounding, that bordering, leaves the world we are familiar with comfortably intact & unchanged. We do not want that beauty reaching out past the limitations imposed on it & disturbing everything that is familiar…It is fear that entices us to imprison art. And no wonder.”
Of course I relate it to fitness…
Do we use the 4 walls of the gym as the frame in which we bound the beauty of physical expression?
If so, why?
Is it fear that entices us to imprison it? Fear of uncertainty, disorder, irregularity, and therefore less clarity around ‘progress’?
What if we took our subjective feels from within the gym; the presence, intent, creativity, awareness; the inspiration drawn from the simplest of things; & applied it to physical activities outside of the gym?
Activities with no time constraints, numbered prescriptions, set rules or finish lines?
Does that seem too open, meaningless, playful?
Perhaps we have come too far with the influence of sport and science in general fitness to ever turn back?
Perhaps the level of objectivity in physical expression today is here to stay?
Perhaps a solo unplugged hike on the fells with nothing but your pulse & inner thoughts for company will be forever deemed madness, unless it is linked to AI?
Perhaps, we are exactly where tech wants us?
Perhaps this whole time chasing ‘efficiency’ has lead us towards dependency?
Perhaps the ‘need’ to record EVERYTHING was influenced by those with the foresight/investment in future tech?
Whatever the reason, physical expression came first.
The gym [which could be described as tech itself] appeared relatively recently.
We should use the gym for what it is, of course. BUT, we shouldn’t get lost in it, nor let it imprison our play & physical challenge; especially through fear of the creativity and beauty that awaits outside.
Aim for your fitness to transcend the gym.
Aim for your fitness to exist Without Limits.
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