Walking around in circles

Yea. So I quit the gym. Now I don't go to the gym anymore. I go to a park. I walk there. And its doing me world of good than going to that gym where I hated every minute of inhaling the pungent smell of sweat profusely covered up in sweet, sickening aroma of some synthetic room freshener.

Synthetic - is the operative word here.  Lack of organic.

I'm by nature a person very prone to various levels of claustrophobic that can heighten directly in proportion to how close I am to people I neither like or care about.

I hated the gym with every ounce of my being. I hated the sense of being intimately close to people - rushing ceaselessly on unmoving machines stacked up together. I hated how people made the unnerving small talk there. I hated the ghastly loud music that managed to disturb me more than relax me.

I hated it all. And what I hated the most was the rush. The rush to burn off calories, the constant monitoring - mostly self. I hated the repetitive sense of being somewhere that was making me nervous - pushing me. I hated the feel of slippery metal that had been in a very recent past grabbed at by hands I didn't wish to make any contact with.

So I simply quit. Against prevalent wisdom, I just did.


Now I go to a park. Its a nice park. It has a joggers track. And it has lots of green: foliage, shrubbery, trees, leaves and grass. I like the green.

I like walking in the park even though there are a lot of people around at all times. But these people don't make me uncomfortable. I can co-exist with them in the park at any given point of time.

The park is very different from the gym. Because the people in the park are different from the people I had to come in contact with at the gym.

The people in my park aren't in a rush. They just are. Like people, they are all around but they don't bear down on me. I can feel the sense of motion but its not bludgeoning. And there is a lack of proximity. No one comes close enough for me to want to back off in a corner and carve a hole through it to escape.

I see the people in park as forms. Forms that move. I don't stare at them too closely. I never pay attention to what they are doing. They don't give me the sense of heaving motion.

The people in my park don't race in countdowns of calories. They're in the park - just like me - being.

I love how there is so much green in the park. In the evening huge floodlights lighten the dark corners. But I love the dark corners anyway. They don't scare me.

I love the snaking, rebellious foliage, and the way it carves a way for itself everywhere. I love the huge trees tops that sit like a canopy of wilderness mounting my favorite dark corners. Right about the time of sunset, sunlight filters through these trees tops and falls through in beams creating flitting shadows on the ground.

If you stop what you're doing and look closely, you can see little shrubs shiver slightly in the cool fresh air and the shadows shiver with them too.

Even though I'm wearing my running shoes, I love the soft, squishy feel of the grass in the wet spots.  I like how I can kick up dust in places where the ground is tougher and grass is weakened.

What I love most about the park is that I can walk around in circles - huge big circles, all around the park - around a center - walking in circles is something of a comfort zone for me, metaphorically. Now when I do that in the park, as well, I only feel - comforted.

I'm just so glad I quit the gym - and went back to what I love most - organic.

I feel good. Much better. Thank you.

xoxo