Lazarus and the Lizard

One foot in front of the other. Pound the rubber track until your feet burn and throb. One foot in front of the other, keep going until you can't breathe. Shed the pounds, build the muscle, one foot in front of the other quickly — faster now, don't waste your time here.

I was at the gym because I have veered from the healthier lifestyle I had last (school) year — I used to cook nearly every meal for myself, and at least get to the gym two times a week. This year, I got way too caught up in everything — eating out way too much and I hadn't been to the gym once this year up until a few days ago. I have now been going every day and spending a couple of hours. And each day I have noticed this same girl.

She is a very beautiful girl with bright blonde hair and these fierce brown eyes — eyes that say, "Don't f*** around with me, I mean business." But upon further inspection, I have realized that maybe these eyes are saying something else. I think they are scared. I think the girl behind those eyes is trying far too hard to reach a level of beauty that the world presses her to achieve — something that she doesn't realize she already has inside if she just got off the treadmill and showed it.

Every day I walk up those stairs to begin my stretches and she is already there — face slightly red and that fierce determined look on her face. As I stretch, she is running — so quickly that every time I feel she will have to collapse soon. But she continues onward! As I move to my cardio — elliptical and treadmill — she continues to run, then move to the elliptical with me. I do the elliptical for 45 minutes, she does it for an hour. I move on to lift weights for another hour. This entire time, she is still working on her cardio — her skinny legs looking as though they might break at any moment. So frail looking, yet the spirit driving her seems to scream strong and determined. When I finish with my weights and wrap up after about 2 hours and 15 minutes in the gym, she is just beginning her weight lifting routine. I continue to the locker room to enjoy the steam rooms, sauna, showers, hot tub, etc — all pleasant rewards for the rather long intense workout. But she never enters the locker room while I relax. Ever. She must still be upstairs working out. My guess is 4 hours a day.

And today while pounding my elliptical and reading a book about the beauty of women entitled, "Captivating" (thanks, Rachael!) I looked around me... and I saw this skinny girl who seemed to be addicted to working out. I continued to look around and all I saw was a mass of fake people swarming and sweating around me — people who are always there doing the same thing — all watching the same things on TV. There are 12 TVs at my gym, nearly all of them tuned into TLC's, "What Not to Wear" or E!'s "Girl's Next Door" I saw a woman in her mid-40s reading a beauty magazine, she was infatuated with an article detailing special creams proven to hide your age and smooth your wrinkles. Some of the guys seemed busy to impress with their 3940832904832094 pound weights and watching shows about the stock market or reading the New York Times as they pressed their brand new fresh white Nikes onto the machine.

And as I took all of this in, while reading my book, I became almost ill about what society has amounted to, and partly what I myself had amounted to.

Yes, of course, going to the gym is a good thing — living a healthy balanced lifestyle is so important. But these people were all obsessed with things that in the end will not matter. And not just the people at the gym, people everywhere in life. Not just stupid Americans! In many countries now, I feel as if I see this happening. The "American Dream" has caught on, but it has taken a turn for the worse.

The American Dream originally meant so many beautiful things: being able to work from the bottom up and create a beautiful life for your family with honest hard work, being able to do what you love without being judged and with the possibility of a practical income, freedom to be any religion and freedom to speak. Freedom to love and laugh and dream and prosper — the freedom to show the true beauty inside of us and offer it to the world without judgment being cast.

But what has happened?! This idea of beauty is gone, no one stops to see the beauty in anything. In the book I am reading, it makes the reader stop and take time to think about the fact that not everything has to have a function, sometimes things really are just here to be beautiful and we need to stop looking at the function of everything and focus more so on the beauty of things - not just outside, but in.

Instead of this, I see nearly everyone — my family, my friends, mere people on the street — making decisions that lead them to a perhaps financially comfortable lifestyles but nothing more.

Where has the joie de vivre gone? Where has the love for adventure and the pursuit of dreams over the pursuit of financial stability been lost? Why has the love for outward beauty overshadowed the deep need for inner beauty? To be truly outwardly beautiful, it must be an accurate reflection of the inside. And recently, I have not seen much of this at all.

It seems that none of my friends have been very happy lately. It seems that as we get older, we wonder why we are here and why we are living? And then we start doing things that society tells us to do or what we think we must do to be higher on the ladder of social statuses... or what we must do just because of all we have accomplished so far.

At the end of your life — does all of that really matter?! Does your grade in Organic Chemistry matter? Does the amount of money you made and the car you drove matter? Do the awesome clothes and your big plastic surgery boobs matter? What you ate and where you slept? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Above all else, what holds most importance is living the life that makes you truly happy. STOP thinking about societal expectations. STOP thinking about what is going to get you that trophy husband/wife. STOP thinking about money and STOP thinking about what other people will think of you if you pursue the innermost desires of your heart and soul and embark on an adventure! Your entire life should be an adventure. Not something that you wake up every morning and dread because of the tasks that lay before you.

Do them if need be, but realize they don't matter, so don't do them with such bitterness. They do not do not do not matter unless they are tasks that relate to your well-being, tasks that provide another part of the adventure — something to add a twist in the plot to the book of your life.

I used to think I would try to be the editor of a magazine, or a columnist for a newspaper, or a photographer for National Geographic or something really lame like that. Admirable goals, sure, all things I am good at, sure, but all of them require something I do not have, which is a desire to spend 1/2 of my life doing shit that I hate to work my way to the top. I can write in my stupid blog when I feel like writing. If I want to write a book at some point in my life — absolutely nothing is stopping me. If I want to capture the beauty of the world in photographs, I can do that, I don't have to my photos of my words published anywhere to be happy about what I have done and accomplished with them.

Instead of deciding right now on some career that I could work my ass off for and do and make a lot of money and rarely see my family or just simply not be happy... I have decided to choose the life of adventure.

So what if I go into debt. So what if I have no idea what my next move is. So what if I possibly fail one of my classes. So what that some of my friends have chosen to desert me? So what that I will be away from my "home" for 1.5 years? I am pursuing my real dream, and I never know what is going to come next, and for that I am so grateful and excited.

I am happy that I am not you. I am happy that I am not stuck making a butt load of money doing something I am so unsure of and stuck in a place I am unsure of being for the rest of my life with a person I am unsure of being with for the rest of my life.

But then again, there's still hope for most. You probably are not really stuck. If you want to breathe, if you want to really live, if you want to stretch out and feel the world around you and discover the beauty in life still available to you and located everywhere, you can. Take a chance. LOVE who you want to LOVE. Show them. BE you want to BE. LIVE where you want to LIVE. LIVE HOW you want to LIVE. BE SCARED! BE EXCITED. BREATHE IN AND TAKE IT ALL IN. Do something no one would expect. Do something that quakes and shakes the barrier of normalcy in society. In fact, break it, break the barrier with a shout of joy and pursue the real you.

Honestly, it's scary. I am scared shitless, but I have never been happier or more excited in my entire life — and it's all because I am letting God lead my adventure and not worry about where I go.

I do realize I just used shit and God in the same sentence. Sorry, GOOODDDDdDD but U FEEL ME, YESSSH?!?!?!