Is that a ham in your pocket?

I'm not sure how many muscles there are in the human body, probably somewhere around six trillion give or take a few million. The good news is that for most of our lives we don't really need to know how many there are or even how to use them consciously. They're there and your body just uses them when the need arises. My favorite moments are when you need to do something and you quickly discover that you DON'T have a muscle for that action. "Sure, I can pick that up for you... Ok... No I can't." It's very disturbing.

You're not aware of these muscles until you start working out with free weights and suddenly tiny corners of your body which should contain a few of those six trillion muscles start to hurt in crippling ways. Someone says, "lift this like this" and you do it, like a moron. A personal trainer could say, "stick this in your butt and lift." and I'm sure people would do it. "This is soooo good for my gluts!" Hey, if it hurts, it's working, right?

It's already sad enough to witness middle-aged men waddling around the gym in knee high tube socks, each one looking like they're hiding a full size ham under their shirt. Now, you have to add in to the equation sore, frozen, painful crippling muscles which gives each of them the impression of post-stoke paralysis. Some walking like Frankenstein unable to swing their arms or move them side to side. Unable to unzip their flies, they just opt to pee in their pants and accept this as a measure of their workout. They walk around the gym with a glossed over look in their eyes that says, "it's alllll worth it." Others, their arms frozen to their sides unable to lift their arms higher than their shoulders. Or their stomach muscles in crisis and they can not bend down to tie their shoes. They just walk around with their laces undone. They move like zombies, pain on their faces, tears in their eyes, their minds racing to debate the merits of this torture. And yet they each press on.

My muscles are close to packing it in. I know the sting and the paralysis because, I too, I carry that ham. But my motivation to power on comes from a single notion and a single face that I hope to one day see again. This is the first time that exercise isn't sexually motivated or vanity. Which is refreshing to some extent, but it's also more maddening. When your motivation is simple vanity, you can justify quitting, yet when the motivation has deeper spiritual meaning, you have to keep pressing on. Those aren't tears of joy you see streaming down my face as I try to tie my shoes.

Getting back to yoga is step one. I like the walking and weight training stuff, but the yoga is where the future lies for me. My favorite part of it is that no one who does yoga ever complains about not being able to bend over to unzip their pants because it's too painful.

My motivation is my own, but know I have a date in the future and I'm trying to get there. Maybe I want to be the sexiest person in prison, ever think of that?