Are You Kidding?

I go to the gym to work out… to exercise. Why else get up early in the morning or delay dinner after work to get to the place where you can work off the sweets from last night or the sweat from the office?

So I have to laugh.

A car arrives at the gym parking lot and circles the lot for five or ten minutes in order to get a parking space closer to the front door! Seriously? It’s not raining. It’s not snowing. It’s not hot. It’s not cold.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s stupid.

So I decided to see what it feels like. I walked up the front of the building and instead of going up the stairs (I planned to do the “stairmaster” once I got inside), I took the wheelchair ramp to avoid the two stairs.

How did it feel?

I realized that this was nothing new to me. I had done this before. I am doing this still in my everyday life.

My job is to talk to people. My job is to pick up the phone and call people and talk to them. That would be like taking the two stairs… not so hard to do when you know it’s the reason you have come here in the first place. Park further away and walk to the front door of the gym. Pick up the phone and call someone to talk to. That’s my job.

And it sometimes feels like the hardest thing to do. And I can come up with the most creative excuses for not doing it. And I can use the same excuses time after time. And I can pretend it’s the first and the only time I’ve ever used and heard these excuses.

And the thought came to me that I was doing something ridiculous… even stupid.

And it occurred to me that this is a common trait of human nature.

So, what will I do the next time I plan to go to the office and sit down to make those calls to people that I have scheduled to call?

I will get up, drive to the gym and walk up those two stairs and not go up the wheelchair ramp. That’s what I will do. SSDD

Sam Green