[24] 8-12 Reps of Being Vain.

An Op-Ed that broadly explores goalmaking in fitness through notions of time, comfort, and vanity. A spiritual successor to [2] Pumping Lead.

1 ALL I DO (NOT) IS WIN WIN WIN

When you win, all you think about is how you’ve proved yourself — prove persistence, prove prowess, prove pride. When you lose, you think about everything else. 

Whether you win or lose depends not just on your dedication to a pursuit, but also on how long you remain dedicated. You may not (and should not) cry over spilled milk because you can always pour yourself another glass tomorrow. But if all your lactating cows lowkey just die tonight then your dairy farm’s fucked tomorrow and that would certainly be a loss. 

The context matters when you’re forced to prioritize between radically pursuing an unlikely win or cautiously preserving the status quo to safeguard against a costly loss. Either way, you’re making a choice — to proact in favor of triumph or react in fear of tragedy. A choice to do (or abstain from doing) something. 

And a choice comes at the cost of other choices. Thus arises the fallacy of sunk costs, which can lead one to remain loyal to a defunct goal not for the sake of its result, but for the sake of the sacrifices that have already been made in favor of one’s goal. You’ve made choices in favor of a goal thus far, you might as well see the end of it. 

But alas, if goals required just the factor of hard work, anyone could have anything they strive for. Alas, no goal is subject to just one factor — it’s an array. Consider the ambitions of others, the interference of entropy, the unpredictability of weather, the mathematics of scheduling, the barriers of geography, the blink of an eye. These factors all interact with one another, clashing and cooperating to muddy the waters of what you can or cannot accomplish. Your wins and your losses are not fully yours to flaunt, but they’re also not fully yours to fault. 

2 ABOUT TIME

To make matters more complex, the proportionate importance of any given factor varies per any given goal. But, broadly speaking, time seems essential for any goal wherein which one would interact with the notion of wins and losses. And that makes sense — because if you’ve invested your time in something, who the hell would want it wasted? 

The value of one’s sunk time, however, is not created equally. A goal that may take you an overnight’s sleep might take me a slumber of an year. The time required for different persons to reach the same goal will most certainly vary — yet the results of their goals are measured by the same metric. It’s demoralizing to come to terms with one’s temporal inequities. 

But the amount of time you must spend pursuing our goals doesn’t matter when your conviction in the goal outweighs the fear of commitment. Once you’ve made the commitment, the concept of time becomes irrelevant — though we may not know how much time is required for us to reach our goals, the lifespan of a goal is fixed as the amount of time one is willing to lend to their goal. 

3 DID YOU TRY TODAY?

Then again, that lifespan becomes an issue with goals such as weightlifting, because there is no end goal. You may argue there is some theoretical limit to one’s athleticism but, in this case, theory takes you too far. Your limit is an asymptote you’ll only ever graze if you fully dedicate yourself to the craft (and only if you’re lucky, at that), but your responsibilities and recreations will limit you from being perfect. 

And yet, I push back on the “that’s not a realistic goal”s and other miscellaneous limitations that one may place on themselves when making lofty goals. While it’s true that certain limitations (such as insufficient luck and legacy) are involved in the progress towards your pursuits, is it not defeatist to tell yourself that a goal is out of reach before you’ve even attempted them? 

I suppose that’s why we set benchmarks for ourselves. To cope with the intangibility of the perfection, we tread the steps of a stairway that’ll never quite reach it’s destination. You may not ever be perfect, but striving for perfection is the only way you’ll get closer to perfection — perhaps (and hopefully) to a point where you’d be content in how far you’ve come with your progress towards perfection. 

That said, the ceiling to one’s potential hinges not on the unattainability of perfection, but the unwillingness to try. There exists a discrepancy between what one wants and what one is willing to do for what they want. An extent of it is how much you think you’re capable of, sort of like a mental block that prevents you from pushing to your limits. Some portion else is the distaste of discomfort, and the unwillingness to invite chaos and craze into one’s livelihood. The rest is the lack of conviction. If you wanted it bad enough, wouldn’t you give up yourself to serve some greater goal? Well, yes.

4 TRAPPED IN THE COMFORT

I am a man of habits, and such has made me a man of contradiction. I am good at making new habits, a talent which I’ve exploited to chase goals — in the context of the gym, it manifests itself as consistency and cardio. Then again, it’s made me even worse at quitting bad habits, a trait that has stifled the progress towards pursuits — an inconsistent diet, a tendency for the suboptimal, an ego chasing strength. 

Habit, even at its most unpleasant, hinges on the comfort of consistency. It is humanity that searches for comfort. Benchmarks distract me from the truth that I search comfort in my fitness goals — the comfort of physique-induced pretty privilege, the comfort of a substantiated ego, the comfort of a routine, the comfort of arguing it is not effort which is my weak link but rather factors out of my control. This comfort has alleviated the agitation, turned anguish, turned accusation I harbor towards all which has kept my goals unmet. 

But what does comfort get you? Well, comfort grants you confidence — a byproduct which saved me from the all-too-common comparisons that one’s bound to make in this industry and the consequential dysmorphia that seems to plague every other gymgoer. 

But comfort is also inertia of the insufficient. I feel like a rookie athlete who finds comfort in having been able to make the big leagues instead of realizing their box plus/minus is dogshit atrocious and they should, in fact, not be comfortable. The goal wasn’t to make the league — the goal was to be a hall-of-famer, or an all-star, or at least a starter. Job’s not finished, so what you celebrating for?

There’s a balance to be struck in how much comfort and confidence and comparison you should invite when evaluating the progress towards your goals. When it comes to the gym, discomfort is the name and the game of this shit — it’s strategic, sure, but you train to failure and cut no corners and control your eccentrics. Discomfort over time is what you need for a fitness goal. 

5 ON SOME “JUST DO IT” NIKE SHIT

Absolute comfort is reserved for those who have achieved perfection, but perfection is a construct — not only fleeting, but fully fabricated. And since perfection is unattainable, pure comfort is too. 

And even if we could be perfect, we couldn’t be perfect forevermore. There exists an effort that must be perpetually invested into our goals as to ensure these goals weren’t met just for a moment, but rather intended for (hopefully) the rest of our commitment to the goal. But it doesn’t matter whether or not we are (or can become) perfect, because our goals to reach an inherent imperfection still require utmost tenacity. 

Perhaps it’s not perfection we’re chasing, not comfort, but contentment. I never needed to be the strongest, the slimmest — I just needed to feel good with what I had. I learned quickly through the gym that you need to hedge your contentment on each goal you’ve accomplished. But the human soul cannot truly be satiated. Beyond the “just a little more” motto of finding those nicks and crannies to fill in with incremental growth, you grow accustomed to what you possess as you greedily aspire for more. 

Once you realize that you are capable of meeting benchmarks, the lifespan of loftier goals depend on you and you alone. Tenacity holds strong when there exists the faith that the fulfillment of your goal is something you truly want. Checkpoints such as carving out abs and benching two plates satisfied the quota of faith. 

But that faith has not come so simply throughout my discourse with fitness. I am confused as to what I hope to accomplish from fitness. Perhaps I’ll never truly attain the physique I hope to maintain. Perhaps I’ve realized that five pounds of gained lean muscle or excised excess fat won’t be the determining factor for the huzz. Perhaps I’ve grown bored of the gym with its monotony and extended rest periods. 

Still, I’ve chosen to remain persistent with fitness for many a reason. A part of me just likes to keep busy, keep productive. A part of me wants to be prepared in case athleticism becomes somehow required in a social setting. A part of me hates to regress on progress that has been made. A part of me does it because my name, my identity is attached to the gym (and now long-distance cardio). A lot of me does it for vanity’s sake. 

6 PRETTY MOTHERFUCKER FLACKO

As per the aforementioned vanity, I hope that my wins will enable me to think about how I’ve justified my vain outlook on life. As for now, I am happier when I have my abs, happier when I am faster than my peers, and happier when my biceps fill my shirts. And I think I’d be happier if I could align myself further with what my vanity entails. 

I know of the prevalence that vanity has on my psyche — to search for what is pretty has come at the cost of dismissing that which is not pretty. I am kinder to myself than I once was, but I worry it’s only because I find myself to be better aligned with what is pretty (and not because I have grown to be more compassionate, more considerate). I have long perceived the activities, the academics, the attitudes I nurture as lesser than those anatomical attributes I possess and pursue. 

But as vanity extends beyond how I see myself onto how I see the world, I fear that vanity will lead me to miss out on not only the qualities of myself that I took for granted but also the qualities of others beyond what my vanity beholds. My faith in vanity flickers when I realize that there will come a day when, even after I reach my most near-perfect state, I will wilt away and regress. When that day comes, will I value myself lesser so? What becomes the difference between wilting away now out of a decommitment to fitness or twenty years into the future when my body can no longer keep up with the immortality of my end goal? I'm not sure where I draw the line for which actions (in the chase of vanity) are permissible for my morals and my mental health. 

And I wonder if my vanity exists as an escape from toying with what it is I truly want. Moving more, lifting heavier, eating healthier are tasks that are (in the grand scheme of priorities) simple in nature. Perhaps it’s been easier for me to believe the world operates in favor of the vain with its spurts of pretty privilege, because it meant that reaching those standards I set for myself out of vanity would treat my turmoils. I am beguiled by the belief that the beauty of others (and, by extension, the beauty of oneself) is of utmost importance. Vanity makes me feel valuable. But that sensation of value comes at the cost of feeling worthless most of the time. 

I’m not fully confident that solving vanity is the right course of action. And even if I were to seek a solution, I don’t think “being pretty isn’t important” is how you resolve a vain soul. But it’d be nice to remind oneself that being pretty isn’t a prerequisite to importance, to value.