Convenience – how we love it! We pursue it and snatch it up at the earliest opportunity. Many of us make our lives so convenient (and sedentary) that in order to get any exercise we have to join fitness centers where we can use machines that produce nothing.
“Working out,” is what it’s called. It seems like “acting out,” in the old sense of pretending to be or do something on a stage. If that comparison is valid, “working out” must mean that one is pretending to work. Is an underlying implication that physical effort is beneath the person who “works out?” No, this has nothing to do with snobbery. It’s just that modern life places most of us in positions that are totally convenient and require no physical effort from us. Yet we know that our bodies were designed to be used, and that exercise is essential to keeping our them in good order. That’s probably why apartment complexes and businesses offer free gyms and why there are many for-profit health clubs.
This scheme of “working out” seems to produce a great deal of wasted energy. What if all the exercise machines were built or retrofitted to harness this wasted energy as electricity? Just imagine that every exercise bike and treadmill was hooked to a generator. The wattage harvested would not be insignificant.
If every machine were designed to harvest energy, “working out” would become just plain old “working.” Perhaps even the vocabulary would change. Instead of bragging that one ran twenty miles on the elliptical machine or squatted three hundred pounds, one could say, “I generated 60 watts of electricity this morning.”
Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer
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1 comment:
This blog reminds me of the kids merry-go-round in Davis, California, which was connected to a bicycle which the parents could pedal to make it turn and the animals would round and around. It wasn't easy to pump but it was well oiled and went at a respectable speed.
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