I rolled into work at 7:30 AM, not because the early bird gets the worm (sometimes the bigger, stronger, more aggressive bird just rips the worm out from the early bird's fragile beak), but to extend my 30-minute lunch hour to 60 minutes. My lunch plan didn't include grazing meditatively on raw carrots and pieces of cheese wrapped in salami sleeping bags, but rather sweating: burpees, squat jumps, light weights, and ab sets. Upon hiring me, the higher-ups encouraged me make use of the onsite gym: one of the perks.
Let me pause for a moment: my employer was a long-term rehab, assisted living, and independent living facility for the elderly...a massive and manicured campus. The goal included prolonging life and improving its quality for the aging. HEALTHcare.
After a week of lunching on medicine ball push-ups, my boss paid me an office visit, "Charlton, we've had some complaints from other employees. They see you working out when they are working and feel that it is unfair. Can you please keep your workouts to after or before work hours?" Meanwhile, half-a-dozen nurses puffed their nicotine cancer wraps in the designated smoking cabana...a relaxing and deserved 15-minute break.
I quit using the gym.
LET ME PAUSE FOR A RANT: In case you haven't picked up on the irony...I worked for a health -care facility, which according to its core values promoted holistic, healthy living. I thought I was setting an example of such core values. Research consistently demonstrates that employees who exercise regularly cost companies less in healthcare, suffer less stress, have more job satisfaction and in the end are more productive.
Productivity...the modern measurement of a human being's worth. And this dysfunctional American obsession and unhealthy relationship with productivity lies at the root of Corporate obliterating my lunchtime workout. My experience was a symptom of a greater cultural problem.
The Big Bosses shut me down because of the appearance of not working. At the same time, I could and did sit at my desk, along with millions of other Americans, pretending to work (an appearance of working) but not really working - searching the net, ordering Christmas presents, looking for new jobs. No one batted an eye. The appearance of work is more important than work. Read that last sentence a few times until you get a little pissed.
Such a bizarre state of being can only exist with an unhealthy idolization of productivity...of defining human beings as producers rather than living creatures. Humans must produce to live (stay alive) but culture has mutated reality into HuMaNs LiVe To PrOdUcE.
From this toxic mindset comes the 60-hour work week, the idolization of busyness, the concept of Career instead of Job, the question "What do you DO?" to define a single aspect of your life that involves tasks you perform in exchange for compensation, working on vacation, not taking all allotted vacation, working when sick, losing your identity at retirement, over-scheduled kids, competitive sports for 5-year olds, 8th-graders encouraged to start building a college resume, eating lunch in your car, burn-out, standardized testing, a professional class-system, sedentary lifestyles...
Unfortunately many of us wake up too late. The top regret hospice workers hear from their patients, "I wish I hadn't worked so much!" Wake up now! Push against living to work and make it a priority to figure out how to work to live. You are so much more than a production machine!
EPILOGUE: Although forced to retire from gym use, I did manage to sneak into the desert with my Yoga mat for a daily 10-minute routine ;-)
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