Smoke the Treadmill
It appears that evey rational person believes with pious certainty that exercising is better for them, me, and the whole of human society than smoking cigarettes. It is nearly impossible to have an intelligent conversation with a fellow human about why one would choose to smoke that does not involve the smoker being disparaged as a person suffering from a slavish addiction, or as an idiot, ignorant of the medical risks of smoking. Prostrating yourself in front of a large street facing window as you climb stairs to nowhere like some kind of bipedal gerbil is universally believed to be the more intelligent choice. Despite these tenants of “living well” 20-25% of Americans still willingly engage in the activity of smoking, while nearly two thirds of Americans participate in no dedicated form of exercise. It is entirely possible that at least for some people, smoking is a better life choice for them than exercising. Perhaps it is worthwhile to take a look at what the inmates know about the asylum.
Smoking is the last bastion for the non-conformist. There is no small irony in that statement, for it wasn’t all that long ago that most people started smoking out of a desperate effort to conform to some peer definition of cool or (as the kids used to say) hip. In modern times however, smoking has been so mercilessly attacked by all forms of media representations that even teenagers smoke at only a slightly higher clip than adults. Teenagers, those restless souls who would mutilate their own private parts in a failing attempt to get mommy and daddy to notice them, have generally decided that smoking is too depraved to countenance. Being a smoker (and I’m talking about real smokers, not those larcenous “social smokers” who by day vote to keep bars smoke free but once imbued with liquid courage steal your hard-earned pleasure sticks while bemoaning how cold it is outside) is one of the only ways to truly distinguish yourself from the herd.
Ralph Waldo Emerson would tell us that distinguishing yourself from the herd is a pretty good thing. He would tell us that following your own path and not always heeling to the cold dictates of other people’s reason is a way to living well. In a world that is awash in gummy patches and anonymous supports most people who smoke chose to do so. Choosing a path is in itself a measure of happiness, a social good that commands respect in a free society. As long as that choice does not impinge on my freedoms (and I will table for the moment the argument about the fascist controls non-smokers increasingly get away with), choice is something to be celebrated not scorned. Most smokers can say that at least in one area of their existence, they are choosing to do something that makes them happy.
The same cannot be said of the wide majority of the third of Americans who spend hours of their precious lives breathlessly trying to conform to standards of health and fitness set by others. I own an Iron Maiden (one that looks suspiciously like an elliptical trainer). I’m sure I speak for many when I say that there is no single time I have strapped myself into that contraption out of free and autonomous choice. There are people who genuinely like the sweat and strain of exercising. To those genetic anomalies, I say bravo and hurrah. For the overwhelming majority of us however, exercise is an unpleasant activity that we suffer out of self-loathing and a childlike need for social acceptance.
Think about the fundamental activity of running. Running is a central aspect to most athletic competition, but outside of a competitive construct, when in the normal course of business does an adult human willingly run? I’d go so far as to say never. Adult humans never, ever run outside of extreme fear or some other duress. It's 4:54, and my paper is due at 5 o’clock; I’ll run. There’s a Klansman bearing down on me, and I’m in central Indiana; I’ll run. My roommate and I both realize there’s only one more beer in the fridge; I’ll run, and I’ll throw obstacles down behind me. Even if you can contrive a situation where you get so happy that you just might want to run around for a bit, you’d stop running the second it became a strain on your system. You would never think, “I just won the lotto, I’m going to run up and down my fifth floor walk-up about 20 times.” It's not just humans; animals never run unless they are chasing something or they are the something being chased. Dogs only run after sticks because they are too stupid to know that the stick will still be there whenever they get to it. Pigs, which I am told are smarter than dogs, won’t run after anything--except perhaps a female pig.
Chasing members of the opposite sex is of course the main reason why anybody succumbs to the voices of self-doubt and submits to the excruciating torture of exercise in the first place. If you need proof of that, look at any married person you know. “Letting yourself go” is the negative way of saying “returning to the place of happiness and balance that I existed in before I found out where babies come from.” This also explains why wealthy guys are rarely all that fit (at least until they realize that they can’t actually take it with them … more on this below). It turns out that a 6 karat diamond is at least as powerful an aphrodisiac as six pack abs.
The exercising lobby tells us incessantly that proper diet and exercise are the keys to being healthy. They ram the message into our brains as if being healthy was the sole purpose of life itself. Now obviously, nobody wants to be sick. But health in a vacuum isn’t worth a whole lot. Has anyone ever uttered the phrase “At least you have your health” and meant anything other than “I would rather not have my health than be in your horrible situation.” At least you have your health is our society’s way of saying “At least you are not dead.” The bottom line is that being a picture of health forever after is just not natural. If your God really wanted you to be thin at fifty It wouldn’t make your metabolism slow to speeds that can be measured on a sun dial.
I do not fear death; I fear a life without trumpets. I refuse to alter my state of living in an ultimately futile attempt to avoid my own demise. Furthermore, I have no desire to potentially extend my life for some unknowable amount of time if all that means is an extra fifteen years for me to eat soft mushy foods while watching reruns of Matlock. Smoking might kill me (“might” not “will”--a crucial distinction that non-smokers seem to have real trouble appreciating). Smoking will certainly cause me to cough more and feel winded after walking up a simple flight of stairs, but the act of smoking is one that fundamentally focuses me on the moment: where I am and what I am doing. It focuses me on the experiences that make up my life (I could argue that it accentuates many of those experiences, but only 25% of you would understand). In contrast, exercise focuses us on the experiences that make life crappy. Exercise reminds us that we are not thin enough, not strong enough, and not immortal enough. It is antisocial and uninformative. The only thing that exercise prepares you for is more exercise. The only discernible difference between the guy who wakes up at 6 am everyday for his morning run and Sisyphus is that the ancient Grecian guy couldn’t choose to stop pushing the damn rock.
I choose the activity that makes me feel alive over the activity that makes me wish I were dead. The best thing about smoking is that it makes me strong enough to resist the propaganda urging me to do things that I don’t want to do, like exercising.