Damon Young
More than the health benefits, getting fit is seriously enjoyable.
A MELBOURNE morning in mid-winter. The temperature is 4 degrees. It's raining: fat, heavy drops. A wind that belongs on English moors. And I'm jogging in it.
My feet are wet, my face stiff with cold, and my hands white.
But I'm smiling: a kind of squinting, panting smile seemingly at odds with the world.
This strange joy is what's missing from many of the debates about health in Australia.
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As this suggests, the pleasure of fitness is partly tied up with mortality:
awareness of bodily decay, and the impossibility of staving off death.
One commits to fitness not to overcome eventual annihilation,
but to make the most of one's physical inheritance before it is too late.
In other words, part of the joy of bodily striving is pride:
recognition that one has not wasted an opportunity.
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