Live Strong?

The reason aesthetics is an effective driver is twofold:

1. Unlike that abstract notion of "health", the results are visible (and awesome!).
2. Dividends are tangible and wonderful. Clothes and sex feel tight and delicious.

I never did see the benefit of strength for strength's sake. I'm a white-collar office girl; my varsity days are far (five years this month, in fact) behind me. There are no parlor tricks, killer skillz, or social games associated with or bettered directly by the (marginal, for all intents and purposes) addition of strength. It's supremely unlikely that I'll ever be able to (or ever want to) accumulate the strength to single-handedly wield and move my mattress, fend off any real physical threat (save for a feral smallish dog, perhaps), or be the most compelling candidate for rescuing a baby trapped under a car.

"Getting strong" as a marketing campaign for weight training therefore holds about as much appeal to me as any other isolated physical endeavor. Practicing yoga only makes one better at the practice of yoga; lifting more weight is analogous, only much less fashionable.

So, it caught me by surprise when I identified with being strong several times this past week - while innovating wily maneuvers about the unlined, unfenced, unmanned dangers of the rural playground over which my darling alma matar is draped. I sprinted through milkweed, scaled dormitories, scrambled up trees as never before - for the quintessence of every object was a climbable, mountable, surmountable apparatus that I couldn't fall off, because I was falling back, gratefully, confidently, on the fact that I was strong (and also the nine+ ounces of forty-proof liquor coursing hotly like ambrosia through my veins). The next branch was far, but I trusted my footfall; the water's edge was distant, but my leap would carry me.

Obviously, this precise foolhardy high preceded many an ill fate, not the least of which was Icarus'. The point, as demonstrated in droves this weekend, is that being strong (when properly tempered with being smart) introduces possibilities. Possibilities beget possibilities; the feat of taking a literal bull by the horns allows the imagination to expand its scope considerably - intensified physicality in everyday living is only a short philosophical skip from a more concerted intellectual effort, more innovative social engaging.

So here's to living strong - and bracing for the notion of strength (power, control, leadership, capability) to line all endeavors.