Lydia Schoch

Growing up I dreaded gym class. I disliked being told how to exercise or feeling sweaty when I walked to my next class and I really disliked how competitive and repetitive the sports were that we played.

In the sixth grade I had a particularly troubling series of physical education experiences. Between Christmas and the end of the school year I sprained a finger at gym class once or twice each month. No sooner had one finger more or less healed than another would be sprained which meant that I spent four or five months living with at least one swollen, bruised, and resistant-to-being-bent finger almost all of the time. The memories of those months made me less interested in organized athletics than ever before. As an adult, though, I realize that exercising is part of staying healthy.

Some people genuinely enjoy the camaraderie of team sports and  the thrill of competition. Unfortunately I’m not one of them. If I try to keep up with activities that I dread doing I’m not going to have the motivation to continue with them. One of my challenges in 2010 and looking forward to 2011, then, is to find a variety of activities that I enjoy enough to come back to tomorrow, next month, and next year.

Here is my brainstormed list of activities so far. I’ve divided them into two categories: indoor and outdoor.

Indoor

• Take the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator
• Walk up or down the escalator
• Heavy duty cleaning around the house
• Knead bread, mash potatoes, mix dough, etc. by hand
• Assist neighbours with heavy lifting or awkward household chores
• Swim (can be an outdoor activity in the summer)
• Borrow fitness books from the library
• Search internet for free workout video clips
• Free activities: pushups, sit-ups, jumping rope, jumping jacks and squats
• Cheap(ish) activities: bowling, roller skating

Outdoor

• Gardening (I hope to have the space for this soon!)
  
• Jogging
• Brisk walks
• Snow creativity – building snowmen, snow forts, snow monsters.
• Going on a hike or camping trip (although not during the winter)
• Bicycling, canoeing, ice skating

Respond

How do you stay active? What non-traditional forms of exercise do you participate in? Can you recommend any other inexpensive, indoor forms of exercise for the winter months? (It’s so much easier to stay active when it’s nice outside!)

Before we dive into the meat of this post there are a few stories you should know.

1986. Lake Erie. A study in personalities: my newly-mobile baby brother, Jesse, tries to crawl into the middle of the lake. I stand before the largest body of water I’ve ever seen and ask where the drain is and how and when it will be pulled. I wonder, but do not ask, where the drained water will go, how loud it will gurgle and how long it will take to refill the lake tomorrow morning.

1995. Ohio. I’m 7/10th a little girl. For now. Every Sunday after church I absorb Xena: Warrior Princess in my newly-decorated, mint-green bedroom, still adjusting to these things called cable television and puberty. The ripple of Xena’s muscles as she fights off the bad guys and her connection with Gabrielle nudges something deep inside of me that I won’t noun for years to come.

The Difference Between Men and Women

In the 1990s I heard the same story about sexuality over and over again at church, in abstinence-only sex education classes at public school, and from the mouths of about a dozen different special speakers overtly and covertly at assemblies and special church functions over the years:

As a young woman it is your job to monitor how you dress, act and behave so that men don’t become too distracted around you. Men aren’t like women. They have needs.

Once I heard a speaker, one of the few women who I ever saw speak in front of a large church group, acknowledge that men needed to be careful not to play around with the emotions of women. That, apparently, was our achilles heel.

As a Christian, especially as a Christian who was also female and a preacher’s kid, I wasn’t suppose to think about sex. Even being attracted to other people was morally dubious. I never did figure out how to avoid that.

Not only did I have sexual thoughts and feelings…only some of them were about the opposite sex. In a culture that said gay or lesbian in hushed tones (and bisexual not even once), in a world in which everyone knew that these things were caused by mothers who loved their sons too much and fathers who loved their daughters too little I had a lot of stuff to figure out.

The pieces I’d collected didn’t fit together. I’d always had a father who adored his kids, who would do anything to protect and provide for them and I couldn’t wedge into the sharp corners of straight any more than I could into the term lesbian.

How can I carry your bag when I already have my own?

As each youth group rally, sex ed class and special speaker layered their ideas about gender roles and sexuality on top of one another the question of carrying two bags weighed more and more heavily on my mind. Even before I knew how my puzzle fit together I thought it was insane to ask me – or any other teenage girl –  to assume responsibility for someone else’s sexuality. Carrying our own was work enough. I didn’t know how to carry two and had no interest in trying.

No one else I knew was asking these questions and if they had their own puzzles pieces to sort out I never caught a glimpse of them. In these ways I felt anything but innocent.

Over time, a very long time, I began to sort out the pieces. There was always a part of me that felt worldly for having these tasks, though. It wasn’t that I was ashamed so much as it was that I didn’t know how to reconcile my life. Asking a metric ton of tough questions was one thing. Bisexuality was another. But I didn’t know how either of these could or should intersect with my spirituality.

I know this is a long post. I have one more story for you.

Toronto. 2009. In the middle of a conversation during a big project a coworker turns to me, tilts his head and says “you’re so good, Lydia.” I’d adjectived myself many times before then. Good was one of the slipperiest modifiers of them all. Between my jumbled up puzzle and the Calvinistic undertones of my (former) faith it felt weird as hell to use that word to describe anyone other than God.

What is innocence? What is worldly?

I don’t know any longer. Those aren’t even the right questions to be asking. All I know is that I’m me. You are you. There is nothing else either of us can be.

By far the strangest phenomenon I’ve encountered while living in the big city is the unholy wedding of environmentalism and consumerism.

Last year a law was passed requiring businesses to charge their customers at least five cents for every plastic shopping bag. In response to this law, more and more businesses are selling reusable plastic and cloth bags so that people who don’t want to pay the fee or accumulate more plastic bags have another option while shopping.

Some of the bags are black and plain, others are covered with bright colours and whimsical animal, plant or geometric patterns. Grocery stores often sell incredibly sturdy reusable bags that have the store’s name printed on the side of them. There is one style of bag that has various phrases printed on the side of it. For example, it may say this is a green bag or this is not a plastic bag.

Snide phrases like these irk me.

The Irks

• I’ve never heard of any these bags (or the companies that make and/or sell them) extolling the idea of buying and consuming less as a permanent lifestyle change.
• Unnecessary purchases are not made one whit more necessary by the type of bag in which one carries them home.
• Sermonizing does nothing to endear other people to one’s cause.
• Ethically speaking, it seems so strange for one to purposefully draw attention to his or her own virtue. It is far better, IMO, to let your actions speak for themselves.

Other Examples

This is only one example of the melding of environmentalism and consumerism. Back when Drew and I still had cable our local news channel would occassionally feature stories in which the host talked about various ways of living a more green life.

In many cases, this involved buying new stuff that had been grown or produced in more eco-friendly ways: appliances, homes, cars, clothing, toys, shoes. Anything that could be repackaged as earth-friendly was repackaged as such and much of it was far more expensive than what one would typically pay for such a thing.

Are organic, locally grown/made, fair-trade products better? In many cases yes. At other times I’m less sure. I do feel a twinge of guilt when I buy something that was probably picked, sewn or assembled by someone working for abysmally small wages in dangerous conditions.

Sometimes there are no alternatives, though, or the conscious-friendly option isn’t even in the same solar system as my budget. This is what I do instead:

• Use it up.
• Wear it out.
• Give away what I no longer need.
• Gratefully accept what others pass along to me.
• Only purchase the absolute necessities.

For certain items I’ll also consider buying used although the North American bedbug epidemic makes me wary about bringing home anything in which they could hitch a ride. A set of dishes, cookware or cutlery would be acceptable things to pick up at a secondhand store or garage sale; an upholstered couch, on the other hand,  is something I’d insist upon buying new. 😉

By far my favourite new TV series this year is The Walking Dead, a post-apolyptic zombie tale based on a series of comics by the same name.

I’ve always enjoyed the heart-pounding excitement of horror and end-of-the-world stories.Gore or violence don’t makes these things worth watching but how the characters react to what is happening and how they come together to fight it (or occasionally lose all social cohesion and don’t do anything at all.)

What If?

There’s something to be said for wondering if a bump in the night is an indication of something other than just a strange sound, for being prepared for the worst even as one fully expects nothing at all or only good things to be waiting around the corner.

When we go out to eat my Dad has always preferred to be seated at a corner booth where he can sit and observe everyone who walks past us. To the best of my knowledge he’s never been harmed in any way while eating out. 😉 He simply prefers to know his surroundings and to never be caught unaware.

There’s also something to be said for facing the ugly truth within each of us. Scary movies and tv shows can and often do portray painfully sexist, racist, homophobic, and classist views. This is not a good place for those who want to believe that we live in a world in which these things no longer taint how people perceive one another. Things are improving, yes, but prejudice and discrimination aren’t going away any time soon.

If the economic, social and national ties that bind us together were unwoven and people had to fend for themselves (or die trying) the world that the survivors re-created would still be birthed out of all of our old assumptions. In this I cannot disagree with the creators of The Walking Dead and similar shows.

The Walking Dead, like most post-apocalyptic tales,  assumes that this new world would be quickly overtaken by sociopaths.

This is Where We Disagree

I understand why someone would assume that a post-apocolyptic world would heavily favour our most selfish tendencies. In a world full of limited resources it would make a certain kind of sense to battle over them in the short term. An individual who goes to bed with a full stomach every night, after all, is going to have that much easier of a time remaining healthy and strong.

Altruism is a better strategy for long-term survival, though. Eventually even the strongest person is going to need help with something: setting a broken limb, having a baby (and at least occasional assistance in looking after him or her for at least the next dozen years), solving a problem, building a home, fixing a broken tool. No one remains young, healthy and independent forever.

It is in these moments that relationships win out. Someone with a history of altruism is much more likely to find the advice and practical help that they needed. Would some selfish or sociopathic people survive? Of course. There will always be those among us who eschew social mores and try to get something for nothing.

I don’t agree, though, that they would define who we are as a species any more than they define us now. Every day I see people looking out for one another in gestures as small as opening a door or offering a subway seat to someone who needs it more to as monumental as a stranger risking his own life to save another. There is so much good in this world, in each of us. (If you don’t believe me, click here.)

Even with our prejudices and deep imperfections people are good. There would undoubtably be conflicts in an emergency situation like the one portrayed in The Walking Dead but I do not, I cannot believe that our future would defined by the grim.