Going to 'the gym'

By Grace E. Cook of Norwood Young America

“Would you like to go to the gym with me?” asked my granddaughter.

At 86 years old and visiting her in a house built on a mountain slope, which looks across a valley to a green forested mountain top over which the sun pops at 8 a.m. each morning and floods the living room with sunshine and heat, I am wondering, “What does she mean by ‘go to the gym?’”

We drive down the mountain to a California community of stucco buildings and into a layered parking lot big enough for a small company. There we find “the gym.”

The “gym” is an exercise building of a number of rooms filled with exercise treadmills, bikes, weightlifting equipment, etc. It also has showers, complete with all your grooming needs and towels galore. It has a lounge area where you can get water drinks and socialize with other gym members, and above the exercise equipment are a bank of TVs with different channels on them. This is not just a gym. This is a LIFE.

I choose to walk on a treadmill at a very low speed. Soon, I increase the speed and I notice the TVs. My granddaughter says, “We can go to a smaller room where the TVs are closer.” Sure enough, in this room the TVs are in your face.

I get on a treadmill and begin walking while watching a news channel. After a while, I stop the machine and just stare at the TV screen. I am thinking about a book I just read about the planet’s blue zones. Here are some of them: Nicoya, Costa Rica, Okinawa, Japan, Ikaria, Greece, Loma Linda, California USA, Sardinia, Italy. Blue Zones are places on our planet where people live healthy active lives well into their 90s and even early 100s. In these zones people do not go to the gym. They just LIVE LIFE!

They walk or bike to family or friends’ homes to celebrate events in their family or culture. They clean their houses, cook their own food, herd their animals, garden, etc. Live Life! All of it has to do with movement of the body and fellowship with others.

I am thinking, one of the keys to a long life is NOT going to the gym, but movement of the body and fellowship with friends, family celebrations, church socials, and of course healthy eating. Living life, doing all the necessary chores it entails, is a way you can live a long, healthy, active life... or you can go to the gym.