My Little Black Book
An ode to mechanism and grace
What you’ll get from this article: A reminder that we improve our bodies for ourselves, as an act of gratitude.
No AI was used to write, edit, or otherwise modify this article. Which may mean the article is worse, but at least it’s genuine.
Every day I go to the gym, I write down how much I lift in my little notebook, then it ceases to exist.
The numbers that I track, so diligently and thoroughly, mean so little in the world that they’re almost not even real. Nobody but me ever sees those numbers. Not my friends, not strangers on the internet, not even other people in the gym that I see for hours every week. Even if I were to tell most people in my life what the numbers were, they would have very little context to know if it was good or bad, it would just be a number floating in space.
“Is that a lot?” they would ask.
“Eh, it’s average” I would say, embarrassed to be, for some reason, showing someone a number that I wasn’t even particularly proud of.
I’m well past being strong enough to tackle the vast majority of things I encounter in my daily life. My body is functional and cohesive, and I love to use it to maneuver myself and other objects through space. I can move all the heaviest objects in my home, help strangers who require physical assistance, and could be useful in an emergency situation.
But the number going up (either in pounds or how many times I pick it up) has rapidly diminishing returns now. Each new benchmark ceases to unlock anything different, except for, well, that benchmark. Which no one sees.
And this would all be fine if I gained higher life satisfaction every time that number went up, but the truth is that beyond the functionality and vanity, I don’t really care to keep the number climbing.
But until today, I hadn’t even thought this through, it was mostly just routine. Today, I felt a familiar feeling of kind of not wanting to go to the gym, and then asking myself why. I wasn’t tired, I had time, why didn’t I want to go?
Well, I realized that it was because I had written the same little number next to ‘Bench Press’ the past 5 weeks in a row, and it wasn’t going up. That little number that no one sees and that barely exists was making me feel bad, and I was avoiding it. It’s like if a tree fell in the forest and only my ears were around, it turns out the only sound it would make would be one that caused me shame.
If the numbers had maxed out on making me feel more good, but somehow still managed to make me feel more bad, it seems masochistic to keep writing them in my little notebook.
So I have two options: either drop the numbers or take away the power to let them make me feel bad. I’m choosing the second one. I choose to reframe my experience of lifting weights to be less about the number and more about the experience.
So I started by asking myself, why do I even like the gym to begin with? If I know that answer, maybe could help me reclaim the excitement. Turns out, there’s three reasons- First, I like looking in the mirror and seeing muscles. Second, I like being strong and capable in the world. And third, I like the sensation of my body exerting force.
To expand on that third piece, I feel masculine and primal when pushing weight, and I feel solid and heavy after finishing. There’s a grace in the movements, feeling the system of supports and pulleys that make up my body and bones going through the motions that my muscles and tendons were designed for. This body was made to affect the world, and this work is an effort of loving admiration.
My body carries me through the world, it is my vessel for experiencing reality and for altering it, too. When I work out, through lifting, or jiu jitsu, or snowboarding, or however else I ask my body to perform, I am paying service to the machine that frames my existence. I am whispering a quiet thank you to the complex and connected multitudes that constitute my whole.
So I will continue to write down the number.
But I will not let it dictate the experience. I will use the number as a journal of the day, but not as a measurement. Instead, I will return to the gym with only the desire to sit at the iron altar of fluidity and grace, to bask in the mechanism of the human design. I will go to rebel against the constraints of size and gravity and momentum, sharpening my skills to overcome physical limitations.
I will go because I am grateful to be alive.