Body by Experience

An associate, shall we say, recently commented on the fellows roofing the house next door. “Heavens they are attractive (edited for family viewing). There is just something about a physique cut from hard work versus cut from the gym.”

Amen and pass the sledge hammer. I live with someone who earned his muscles this way. He almost never hits the gym, but he does everything, and I mean everything, himself. Need firewood? He goes into the woods, chops down a tree, and carries it back up the hillside over his shoulders. Need 6 tons of gravel spread in the driveway and around back? He carves out the rest of the day. From carrying a king sized mattress on his head to planting trees and driving stakes, he uses his body day in and day out to build our life for the better. I actually have to be careful when I comment on heavy objects like landscape boulders as we drive along. “Do you want it? I’ll go pick it up right now.”

I honestly don’t know if a person actually looks any different when they work out this way, but when you know it, it just feels different. It reminds me of the lessons of Good Will Hunting. It’s one thing to be able to quote a sonnet, another to generate one from your heart because you are in love. One thing to know what the Sistine Chapel ceiling looks like from a textbook, quite another to know what the chapel smells like the first time you set foot inside. I could quote birth-to-three neuroscience chapter and verse, but when my daughter was born it went from theory to religion.

A toast to experience. Drink deep.