The Fountain of Youth
“Exercise is king. Nutrition is the queen. Put them together and you’ve got a kingdom.” These are the words of fitness expert Jack LaLanne. It is good to be fit and healthy. Properly pursued, you will look and feel younger by them. This seems like first-grade level knowledge. We may recall from history, for example, that the ancient Greeks made an ideal from the excellencies of the human body, instituted in activities such as the Olympics, which was revived and has been carried on in modern times. While it may seem commonplace now, there was also a train of thought in our recent past that figured focusing on health and fitness was quack science, even dangerous.
Jack LaLanne was a pioneer in refuting these notions. He is credited with opening the first health and fitness club in America, and practiced what he preached until his dying day. Those once-strange fitness clubs, machines, and routines inspired by Mr. LaLanne are now everywhere. They don’t catch our eye. In those early days, however, doctors thought exercise would lead to heart attacks and other problems. “Stay away,” they told their patients.
That type of advice was, ironically, probably uttered by doctors who were heavy tobacco users, as was common in the late 1930s when Jack was getting his start. (It is a fun fact of history, for example, that future president Theodore Roosevelt was prescribed cigar smoking as a young boy as a treatment for his chronic asthma!)
Health & Fitness
Many can point to examples of people who lived a long time but did not take care of themselves. They can also find people who took care of themselves but unfortunately died early. But exceptions prove rules; they do not refute them. Rules are highlighted precisely because exceptions stand out so brightly in contrast to the common fact.
To say we should avoid being healthy and fit on the grounds of those exceptions would be like saying we should not save for retirement because some people win the lottery. While it is true some get extremely lucky, we would be inviting our own destruction if we based our lives off that very tiny chance.
Given the facts, why do we still have to fight arguments against health and fitness? Perhaps it may be some do not believe in free will. They take a deterministic approach. They think some will live long no matter what they do, while others are destined for a short life.
Therefore, why waste time putting in effort at the gym or in the kitchen when you could be doing what you love? They think of a life of bland leafy greens and sweating under a barbell, and think, “No, thanks!” The earth has been plentifully stocked with comfy couches and delicious salty snacks, and indulging those appear to feel more pleasurable, so why not enjoy them as much as possible? One seems like a definite, immediate pleasure, while the other’s benefit seems far off and uncertain at best.
Sooner or later in life, everyone is confronted with the “hedonism paradox”: the more we solely try to pursue pleasure, the more miserable we become. For a time though, we think the structure is boring while doing whatever we want is the best. Why is that? What informs our idea of what is best? And why are we sometimes afraid to make the leap between what we wish would be true, and what we know – or are pretty sure – is true?
Discipline creates definition. In a way, to choose nothing is to choose everything, like being a formless blob. This has been stated many times in many ways: A Russian proverb goes, “Freedom spoils, and lack of freedom teaches.” William Penn said, “Liberty without obedience is confusion; obedience without liberty is slavery.” With these in mind, health and fitness are tangible examples in life of our mind being focused, being ordered.
They are outward manifestations of inward beliefs. This is but one reason why we feel younger by health and fitness because that commitment and dedication carry on or spill over into other areas of our lives. We gain a definite direction, and exclude other paths, instead of feeling bogged down by many potential choices.
But in the beginning, there can be fear behind this, the reason why we don’t pursue our best interests. To be healthy and fit, and to commit to those, creates a standard we know we will feel bad if we break. But if we never commit to a thing, we seem to have a cop-out to ourselves to say we never tried. If we go to the gym, or eat right, and feel those benefits, we make a thing we can then lose. Thus to the end of our lives, we need to maintain those as we are able. We are no longer allowed to make excuses for ourselves; we cut off routes of retreat.
And strangely enough, to limit our choices feels a bit like we have reached some threshold of death. It is to say, “As long as I live, I shall not do this.” The part of us that was permitted to be lazy and unhealthy has died. But why should we mourn that? Don’t we want to feel refreshed and energetic like we are children? As has been shown, health and fitness involve a great deal of introspection: it doesn’t need to make you into a grunting meathead, or an overly-delicate and dainty dieter, but everything behind it is tied closely to the mind.
It is more than the simple act of picking up metal and putting it down or eating a green crunchy thing instead of a salty crunchy thing. If exercise and eating right will help lead us back to youth, perhaps we can question why we thought it was a good idea to leave youth in the first place! And even ask what is youth! Aren’t young people curious? And age is just a number, right?