Old school

Good morning.

There are a few things in my life that I find memorable. Memorable, because they have shaped who I am. Memorable, because they taught me a lot, although they were silent and wordless. Memorable, leaving me with a secret, silent, speechless.

Some things you learn while observing. You realize something, you see something, you notice something. It comes to you, like a realization, like a discovery, like a memorable lesson learnt.

Remarkably, the things that were most memorable to me were all concerned with sports, and they all occurred in the days when I was still living at home.

At age 21, I left home to go live in a student’s room in Ghent, where I went to college. That was a rather painful point, for although I had longed to move away from my parents’ house and find that rush of being responsible for your own life and figuring things out on your own, that freedom to choose and go as you choose, that sky where I could spread my wings and see all I wanted to see, I still had to leave behind some pretty important things in my life.

For one, there was the fitness club.

For years, I had been training and working out, lifting weights four times a week, in a small and modest, yet very decent and pleasurable gym in my hometown. Since I was sixteen, maybe even fifteen, I had been visiting the weights and training my butt off. I enjoyed this very much. The silence, the focus. No talking, just sweating and pumping every iron like it was the last thing you’d ever do. I was very serious about lifting weights, I was very passionate about bodybuilding.

I never thought much about it. It was just a habit of mine to jump in at the gym about every day, change, and hit the weights. It was a habit. A quiet and modest habit, that was just me.

Moving to Ghent, I had to leave a big part of my life behind. Maybe I could have found a gym in Ghent, but the only one I found was a big one, with difficult machines and I could not find the intimate atmosphere there of four or five people working the different machines and weights. It was too big, too impersonal. I didn’t feel like I would fit in. So I dropped the weights.

Another thing was running. Since I was ten years old, I had been running. The place where I lived was neither town nor countryside, it was somewhere in between. You could run on the streets and pavements, and if you fancied the distance, you could run up hills and between the fields, sometimes filled with grains and vegetables growing, sometimes barren and deserted. You could always see the sky and you could wink at the rising sun when you were high up in the country landscape, running uphill between the fields at six a.m. Running made me feel alive and close to nature. Not only did I breathe in the air, but I also took in a lot of the beauty of nature. The sunrise, the heat, the cold, the rain, the starlight, the fields laying extended at all sides, the trees and rivers, and even the streetlights buzzing on a cold and misty winter’s morning.

When I moved to Ghent, I arrived in a crowded town, full of ancient high buildings, overcrowded sidewalks, shops, concrete and cobblestones. There was no green, and there were no beautiful sights to take in. It was a town, a bigger town. It was maybe good for some people, but I died because nature was no more to be found. I struggled to find a way to keep running, but after some trials around a stretch of water that was popular for running, I gave up out of pale and stale boredom. There was no rush in that, no joy and ecstasy.

The last sport I had to give up was ninjutsu. I had been training in this martial art in a small improvised kind of dojo with a handful of friends. The atmosphere was friendly and enjoyable. We laughed a lot, while trying to figure out how to kill each other as quick and merciless as possible. It was a great sport, but I trained in it for not so very long unfortunately.

There was a dojo in Ghent, but this one was too small and uncomfortable, and too expensive.

So I gave up most of my life, moving closer to the university. The only thing left, was to study. Studying, and, because I felt empty and infinitely sad missing all the joys of my hobbies, starting to do a lot of dope.

A big town is not the place for me. Big things are not for me. Returning to my hometown after many years, I longed to pick up where I had left off. But a lot of things had changed.

The gym, which used to be small, intimate and private, showcasing always the same handful of friends, had moved and expanded, and was now a place brewing with activity and people. People in tight stretch pants, with shiny sport shoes, on their smartphones half of the time, talking like it was a nightclub or a pub, and a lot of different, kind of like strange machines. It was a shock.

I was so familiar with the old gym, small, intimate, close to my heart. It was a place where I could hide, where I could be me and not be noticed. Where I could just do my thing and go about my business without anyone disturbing me. It was a haven for my solitary mind. Now the whole thing had exploded and been commercialized. The spirit was no longer that of silent and private labor, but of outgoing social mingling and showing off your fancy clothes. I tried training in the new gym, but it was all very different. Spinning, kettlebells, beach body workouts, Zumba… It was difficult to focus, and I felt very much out of place with my old school clothes and my private mindset. It was like being in Disneyland. Man, things had changed.

And running? Well that went a little bit better. The streets were still the same, the hills were still the same. The sun still rose like before, and the cold and the mist made for intimate joys touching the heat of my sweating hands.

But here as well, things had changed.

Before, I think I was the only person running. It was not a common thing to do. Now, it had exploded as well, and things had been heavily commercialized. As in the gym, it was no longer about a pair of sneakers and a loose and comfortable training suit, no, it was about the hot pants and the shiny outfit. There were a thousand different shoes to choose from, and technology had caught up with the good old Walkman and stopwatch. Heart rate monitors with GPS, Bluetooth earbuds for the apps on the iPhone strapped to your arm (in an equally shiny sports tie), it was a whole different game. It was no longer old school and peaceful, it was commercialized and screaming for attention. Where I had been the only runner in all those years before college, there were now runners on the streets and sideways every time of the day, all in shiny and tight, colorful specialized clothing and hyper performative shoes.

I don’t know.

And the ninjutsu, I think that has changed for the better. There is now, at a small distance from my town, a real dojo, with a better teacher. I would love to visit one day, but coming back from Ghent, trying to catch up with the old habit, I find myself mostly uncomfortable. I feel like I am in a crowd, and everybody’s chattering and tripping, all wrapped up in their sports and leisure. Running and going to the gym are now ‘in’, they are things you have to do. Everybody does it, and it has become a very social thing.

In my days, it was the opposite. You would go running or visit the gym to find some time away from people. To find solitude, peace, emptiness. You would go there to find silence and empty your mind. Now you go there to talk and be noticed, to brag with you expensive trainers and your stretchy tank top.

I guess it’s still like, working out, but it’s become all about the outside, the social norms, and it is no longer a private thing to do. There is no more intimacy, there is no more focus, there is no more neverminding and just being by yourself. You have to be social, and you have to be conscious about everything. It has become an outside thing, where it used to be an inside thing.

So there is one more sport I am considering. Taking up judo where I left that. So close to my blue belt examination, after six or seven years of fighting and training hard.

And what do you know, the dojo has moved, and has been renewed and rebuilt.

The tatami is still the same size, but where before the pub was a charming old piece of furniture, filled with smokes and beers, now there is a modern no-smoking bar, with sports drinks and large windows looking out at the training field. The chairs are no longer those brown wooden and worn out chairs, the walls are no longer those damaged brown wooden walls, and the smell, that smell that hit you when you stepped in through that swinging door, that smell that told you it was time to hit the tatami, that smell is no more. It is all modern now, clean, and I am sure the judo is the same, but the atmosphere, I don’t know if I can adapt to that. I might give it a try.

Most of all, I would like to take it all up again, but it seems very much like we have moved from the past into the future. And where the past was imperfect, amateur, small and intimate, the future seems to be all about perfection, sterility and science. Where before it was all just small business, amateur business for the few who loved it, now it is all so common to work out, to go running, and who knows, maybe also to practice martial arts.

I loved the good old days. The smells, the privacy, the solitude, the focus. It is something I can’t explain, but times were more silent before, more modest and easygoing. Now everything is about me me me, and have you seen me and have you noticed my new outfit. It is about bragging with your gym membership and being part of the local running club. It has become so big, it is no longer about finding private space and a solitary activity, far away from your busy life. No, it is your busy life. It has just been eaten up and taken up by the mainstream and the masses.

And I find the people and the atmosphere rather disturbing, and it is very hard to focus.

Sure you can be at the gym for two hours every day, looking at your phone and chatting with all the other shiny people, but are you sweating, and are you hitting the weights? Are you still dying with that last rep, that last rep, that last rep. One more. Now you can rest. Are you intense?

And you can put on your fancy clothes and meet with your friends and turn on your heart rate monitor and GPS, and run for half a mile and then go for a drink before you go home and shower, but are you entranced by the rhythm of your feet pounding away the pavement step after step after step. And is the sunrise there to take your breath away in an intimate moment of looking up and finding infinity, glory, ecstasy? Are you feeling it, are you alive, are you really living it? Is it about you, or is it about the social life? And do you still go to the extreme, do you still defy the odds, do you challenge boundaries and are you still fighting for your life?

Are you serious?