To Bind and Loose....

There is something about being around other people working on improving themselves that rubs me the right way....but.... then I think of the narcissism, the self-image issues, the eating disorders, the extra (not naturally produced) testosterone. There are whiffs of negatives that seem to distract my mindset as I exam this niche of people that seem to personify something.

For the longest time, I didn't understand it. I notice many things about the nature of working out. I understand the ridiculousness about muscles that aren't needing to be the size of my head. I see the craziness of killing yourself in a gym for sport while others perform manual labor to put food on the table.

I can empathize with those that will never step into a gym and I'm one of those that is frustrated when I go a week without gym time.

Today, I realized why I need it and why I want it. (Need, obviously thrown out loosely)

There is an underlining mentality of many people in the gym that can be best describe as "Go as hard as you can, until you fail". I love it. The purpose of my working out is going in knowing that when I leave I'll have failed in that failure is my success.

And inversely, if I leave without failure, my experience WASN'T a success.

When we live in a culture that harps on failure, the gym sees them as victories.

This, like almost everything, tangents me into spirituality. God can use are failures better than our successes. It's not that he doesn't use our successes, but our egos tend to take the credit most of the time. But when we fail, and we will fail, God's glory shines through and when our limping egos can't take it....we see God.

The failures in life are similar to the failure in the gym. They are marked with humility and they are the catalyst for growth.

How many times have you learned from success?

How much does failure move us?

I guess, in summation, I go for failure in the gym...maybe I need to do the same in life sometimes.

If you don't understand what working out does....when you do it right, it literally rips and tears your muscles. You get bigger and stronger by the rest and nutrition between workouts. The growth come after you've hurt (minor) your body.

Your muscles can't grow without this tearing, why do you think you can grow closer to God without the same principle?