7/21/22
Listen, I love my gym.
It’s one of my favorite places in the city, and 4-5:30 PM is my favorite time of day. I’m not exaggerating when I say that lifting weights has changed my life.
I go to a community-based gym. If you’re interested, you can make friends there pretty easily, and it’s kinda cool because people shift from these blank figures (smiley guy dark hair always working hard on his deadlifts) into real people (Larkin about to go to med school reads this newsletter insanely supportive friend).
Anyways, lately I’ve met a bunch of people from my gym who have all made similar comments to me after we’ve talked for a bit.
“You’re a lot nicer than I expected you to be.”
“You always look really serious when you’re working out.”
“I probably wouldn’t have ever talked to you because you look so focused.”
One of my friends will simply look at me from across the room and mouth the words, “You’re mean mugging.”
I know that it’s the gym and we’re all there to work out and I’m definitely not going to worry so much about controlling my face every moment, but I’ve realized that these comments bother me because my face and heart aren’t cooperating. Because they’re so far from how I feel on the inside.
Because I care.
About it all. About you, about me.
I care about the way that my words come across, about the way that my facial expressions indicate my thoughts. My feelings.
I care about the mood that you’re in, about why your day was a bit tougher than you had anticipated.
I care about what my brothers are doing on a Tuesday and about whether my mom knows her beauty and about the quality of sleep my friends have been getting lately.
To care so much is dangerous – it doesn’t take long to learn.
To say what you’re actually thinking. To share how you really truly feel without tampering it down, without waiting an acceptable amount of time to respond, to accept risk and to do it/think it/say it anyways.
So you stay on the defense, right? Act protective, mysterious, cool?
Keep your distance, stay aloof, act like you don’t care?
I’m sure if you took a moment, you could dive into your memories and find one that taught you this lesson. You could describe to me a time when you took a risk, spoke from the heart, made a risky, desperate decision, and the results felt disastrous. Maybe even recalling the memory stirs up residual embarrassment, pain.
A writer named Rachel C. Lewis says, “There is nothing more beautiful than being desperate. And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care.”
I do care. About you, about me. About why your day was a bit tougher than you had anticipated. I’ll be desperate. I’ll call out beauty for what it is, I’ll tell you how I’m really feeling. I’ll reach out for a hug just because I’d like to hold you.
I don’t want to waste any time.
Lightly,
Leah
Leah Kepley, M.Ed. 