Act As If

Time slowed and I watched the cars collide in the intersection ahead. Glass and metal composite erupted in a showering fountain of chaos. There were long, stretched-out pauses between each bit of motion, as if my mind could slip entire thoughts into the gaps. Random, disconnected questions: Why isn’t there an In’N’Out in NYC? Could a wormhole be the key to interstellar space travel? Did the Jews build the pyramids at Cairo? Like flipping through photographic snapshots while a video plays at double speed.

I’d seen this kind of slow before. Back in the 90s, monstrously large cameras called Fastax could shoot a thousand frames per second, enough to watch a bullet exit a gun or strike a target. Nowadays, a decent iPhone might pull it off.

And now here I was, watching real life at something like 1000fps, as one of the cars, its path permanently altered, began sliding toward me.

Oh wow, it’s heading over here. Where’s it going to hit? I should move. I should get out and run. I hope my airbags don’t go off.

Thud.

It hit the front driver’s wheel, bounced back a few feet, and all was still.

I was ok. I was ok. My heart was hammering, breath loud in my ears, hands trembling. I ran a quick inventory, yes. I was ok.

But then the quiet came. And with it: What’s even the point to life?
The feeling rose from my toes, creeping upward until it wrapped around my chest. My lips could barely sip the air beyond it. That feeling that gives license to lie down on the sidewalk and quit. The one that whispers the only things worth breaking the stasis are cheap, delicious calories or intoxicating substances.

The tinkling of glass aborted the spell, distant remnants of post-crash chaos. I began moving. Not fast, not with energy, just forward. Crawling over the center console because the driver’s side door wouldn’t open. Standing now. Another inventory: toes wiggled, fingers flexed, neck turned. Intact. Then toward the other cars. I acted as I considered people should. Was immediate aid needed, or would an ambulance suffice?

Everyone walked away from the vehicular carnage. Three inoperable cars, but three seemingly fine people, if the impending bureaucratic headache of dealing with insurance and totaled cars could be considered “fine.”

A few hours later, I was in the gym, chasing catharsis. Normally it sets the tone for the day ahead, but today I needed more. I wanted the slate wiped clean. If I could behave as I imagined those unburdened by my afflictions behaved, maybe I could, even if it left me weighed down by imposter complex, experience some portion of their greener grass.

A couple times a week, I’ll do a slow 90-minute zone two workout. Keeping my heart rate under 135bpm, I’ll sit on the rowing machine and meditate. Those days are generally better.

Photo by Kyle Kranz on Unsplash

But today I needed to feel something. I wanted to hurt, and in that, shake off the morning’s scene. So I went a little nuts: 90 minutes with my heart rate averaging 155bpm, twenty beats higher than my usual absolute ceiling for that long an effort. By the end, I’d rowed a half marathon. That’s more than 2,000 meters beyond my typical 90-minute session.

I was drained, of energy and of the morning’s heaviness. The clean slate offered only tranquility and the intoxicating euphoria of exhaustion. All was glorious.

There was no effort in my urge toward this solution. For decades I lived with a sense of fragility, as if the whole structure of my life might collapse at the first real resistance. I didn’t get a job I wanted, eat was the solution. I got the big job I wanted, eat was still the solution. Eat was the ubiquitous means of betterment from the beginning. Even when substances entered the equation, eat remained intact.

But today, eat barely even registered, a blip on the radar, never in contention.

I spent the rest of the day basking in pride. Not the hollow achievement that once gave cause for relapse. Not the performative check me out that had led to failure in the past. But an honest reflection: I’d chosen exercise without having to think it through at all. I hadn’t fled the urge to eat and forced movement in its place, I’d simply, instinctively, sought exercise as escape.

Pursuit of my goals isn’t effortless today. I will often have to force myself to go to the gym, remembering that it will improve my day. I give much thought to the food I eat, both quantity and quality.

The subtle change that is most remarkable to me is my day-to-day comfort. Where I once found intoxicating euphoria in stuffing myself to the gills, the idea of that now makes me squeamish. It isn’t something I feel compelled to seek out. Where I once fled from the idea of physical exertion and intentionally sweating, I seek it out now because I enjoy it.

This is a total inversion of my beginning paradigm. Comfort once meant stasis and consumption. Back then I genuinely enjoyed stillness, and the compulsion to feed away the dullness of life. Today, comfort means motion, choosing strain over stasis, exertion over escape.

And somewhere along the way, the grass beneath my own feet turned green.