When I was a Cardio Junkie, I used my excessive running as a license to overeat. As a result, I never got my weight as low as I wanted. But even if I had got down to my lean, muscular ideal, I would have to be faced with the question: What does it mean to be alive? If maintaining your ideal physique requires such a narrow range of activities and the exclusion of vacations in which you sample different kinds of foods and may take you away from your workouts, dinner parties in which you’re sharing rich foods with friends, the casual hanging out with friends and family and talking and eating over long periods, living spontaneously in which you may not have access to the training facilities you need and the foods you normally consume, you end up living inside a self-induced prison. You look fantastic, but are you really alive? To be fully alive we should, most of us would agree, have spontaneity, intimacy, and regular human contact. But if maintaining your physical ideal requires isolating yourself, what have you become? A perfect exterior perhaps with nothing inside—a sort of mausoleum.
I’m reminded of this gorgeous neighborhood in Palos Verdes where all the houses cost millions of dollars. Whenever I drive past this section of Palos Verdes I notice there is no sign of people, with the exception of gardeners, landscapers, and other workers. The houses themselves look empty and as a result they seem less like homes and more like mausoleums.
This obsession with sacrificing our life to maintain a perfect image is what I call the mausoleum approach to life. Some of us not only do this with our bodies, but with our possessions as well. Take the man who buys an expensive car but rarely drives it, keeping it in the garage to preserve its perfection because the thought of it getting a ding or having its paint oxidized by sunlight and calcium-dense bird droppings is the source of his greatest nightmares. His pleasure in owning the car is not in driving it but in the knowledge that it is sitting, in perfect condition, inside his garage.
In a similar vein, someone may spend over a hundred thousand dollars making a new kitchen but never use the new stove or oven for fear of ruining the kitchen’s pristine condition with scorching smoke, fire, and scalding, bubbling water. Nor will he slice tomatoes or strawberries on a cutting board for fear that the acidic juices will spill and permanently stain his beautiful iridescent granite countertop. Nor will he invite guests to enjoy his new living room for fear that the snaps, buttons, and other protrusions from his guests’ pant pockets might gouge his four-thousand-dollar Italian suede sofa. This same individual will not own dogs and cats because of dander, fur balls, and other inevitable messes. He can’t drive his car. He can’t use his kitchen. He can’t invite people over. He can’t have dogs, cats, perhaps even children. There is something reductive about the way he tries to escape from life by creating an illusion of perfection and control as he nestles inside his soulless mausoleum.
The cardio junkie does the same but his mausoleum is not his
possessions but his own human body. Like Dorian Gray, his exterior becomes more
and more perfect as his soul rots and decomposes.
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