When you look around at how fitness is sold to you, it is most often represented as a serene depiction of beauty, an ode to the aesthetic of the human form. Void of grimace, full of products that can make it all feel effortless.
In essence, a lie.
Ironically, fitness does not lie.
Fitness is effort.
Effort is truth.
To propose that fitness can be gained effortlessly is to insinuate that youth comes with age.
We develop fitness traits so that truly hard efforts won’t feel impossible. So that life won’t feel impossible. The truth behind effort is that life is possible, and will continue to be, as long as we know it is worth the work.
Instead we are sold a false premise.
Meals that don’t feel lacking.
Drugs that make the deprivation unnoticeable.
Shoes that make each bound easier, more cushioned, more spring. More comfort, less effort.
Clothes that squeeze our silhouette into our aspiration.
We see all of this on faces unaffected by bodies in motion. Posed, refined representations of stillness, selling us ease.
I look for the opposite. The faces I see are examples of effort. They represent a different void, one not bound by pretense. An emptiness that holds potential because it is wrapped in truth. They capture a moment of honest self-awareness: a reminder that life is impossible to understand but doable regardless.
I’m grateful to these faces because they remind me of the cost, and of what I am buying with my effort. Which is something that can’t be sold.
