Friday, March 7, 2008
"Sermon"
The always wonderful, fantastic, erudite, succinct, clever, poetic, and observant Seablogger wrote what he dubbed a sermon the other day as a result of experience fighting his current illness.
If you are healthy, but sluggish and heavy, move your butt until you downsize it. If you are ill, that’s no excuse. When my lung was collapsed, I could feel that it was no longer possible for me to bicycle to the beach, but I didn’t take the elevator to my third floor apartment. I kept climbing the stairs because I could, even if it left me winded for a moment. Do all you can, and learn to tell the difference between mental and physical resistance. If you brain says I don’t wanna, ignore it. If your body says, I can’t, yield.This is terrific advice. The trick is to heed it.
Exercise every day. It doesn’t matter what you do. Walk, jog, weight-lift, skate, cycle, swim. Stretching is good too. You don’t have to take up yoga, like some of the freaky people I used to see out on the beach at dawn. But keep limber. Don’t let the parts stiffen up.
Why? Here’s another basic truth. Exercise probably won’t lengthen your life. If you lose a roll of the genetic dice, disease will happen. But if you exercise, even when you are ill, you will be strong enough to lead a normal life almost to the end, and believe me, that beats shuttling to the hospital. You will also be more alert, you will sleep better, you will feel better than if you sit in front of the computer all the time.
Labels: blogs (others'), friends, writing
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