Life Versus Lifestyle

Have you noticed the peculiar, stealthy
proliferation of a new commercial commodity
in our communities; self-identified as fitness
"clubs" to which all are cordially invited to join
to enhance their lifestyles. And while the
ubiquitous presence of these recreational
exercise institutions attract hordes of clients
packing parking lots, people appear to have
absent-mindedly set on a high, unreachable
shelf, memory of how to achieve exercise,
eschew sedentary habits, adopt sound nutrition.

Those who religiously devote themselves to
the alter of self-aware presentation, quality time
at well-appointed gyms and recreational workout
asylums for the memory- and habit-impaired
suffer an inability to self motivate, to perambulate,
challenge nature on her own turf, exercise mind
and body nourishing both adequate to their own
initiative. Expert opinion must be sought, approved
equipment used, personal instructors involving
a prime workout. Then the drive home, stopping
at a handy fast-food outlet to complete the scenario.

This lifestyle commitment has become so
endemic it has led contrarily to an epidemic
the health care community identifies as
inexorably leading to a current-and-future
population of hugely overweight, disease-prone
succession-demographic; children, teens, adults.
All of whom have become immune to using
and treating their bodies as the finely-calibrated
precision instruments whose well-being reflects
our own, understandably. This asymmetry of
thought and action, a syndrome of neglect, has
its morbid grip deep within the social contract.

Have you noticed, your social peers, friends,
neighbours, family, are robustly over-ample
in girth? Worse, the role models within and
without community and society are becoming
increasingly rare, a truly vanishing species.
For within health-care institutions themselves
the health professionals are increasingly
puzzlingly presenting as ungainly in size and
immobility. The theory of health and disease
prevention is their avowed profession, yet they
fail their initial tests by excusing themselves
from the restraint they impress upon others,
and encase themselves in ponderous excess.

Presumed experts in their professional field of
health and medical knowledge they fail to
mobilize experience on their own behalf; their
pallid, obese waddling presence does not inspire
confidence; their sternly cautionary message of
abstinence where required, resourceful application
when needed, falls on deaf ears, observant eyes.
When the sensible balance of the Golden Mean
eludes them, how can it entice us?

Their failure serves to emphasize the futility of
it all; if direct knowledge and constant professional
exposure to the life-draining implications of chronic
yet avoidable conditions serves them so ill, they
present as personal failures. The morbidly obese
nurse and the breathless, overweight physicians
lecturing, hectoring, belies the cause and the
message is still-born, as we heedlessly descend
the abyss of self-afflicted misery, succumbing to
disease, unease, and early departure from life.