Yesterday, while on the treadmill at my gym, I contemplated how odd treadmills and gyms are. Here I was, paying not a small sum annually to use a machine to help me run, when I could very well be doing it for free in the great outdoors. How silly that we need exercise at specific buildings in order to keep ourselves fit and healthy. Now I now that gyms are not new inventions, the origin, I believe, going back to ancient Greece, however I still think that modern gyms are products of modern society, especially when you consider treadmills. Paying for a running machine? In Walden we are mocked for working so hard just to travel, when if we simply traveled we would get where we were going much sooner. Now, we work hard so that we can run far and get nowhere.
This is the message of my dear New England philosophers, high on the romantic idealism of Nature with a capital N. Today, we live in concrete jungles and become concrete monsters. I grew up in a small town, so I know what I am missing. The benefit of Nature isn't some romantic ideal of communing with Mother Earth, but the complete solitude it offers us to commune with ourselves. (When has a tree ever phoned you in th middle of dinner?)
Perhaps it is because of my upbringing that I understand that solitude and loneliness are not the same thing. We are afraid to be alone. We are afraid of loneliness. But what is loneliness, really? I don't believe that we are that insecure that we believe we will never connect with another person again. Most people are not so socially inept as to be complete loners. No, I believe that the reason we wish to crowd ourselves with others and avoid solitude is to avoid our own selves.When people cannot bear to look in the abyss, they avoid doing so by living in cities where they have so much to do that there is no possibility of even thinking about it, except for that dull feeling that there must be something more.
"All miseries derive from not being able to sit in a room alone." -Pascal
No comments:
Post a Comment