a perfectly good life

I don’t have time to exercise, I am a busy man.
I don’t have time to exercise, I’ll do it when I can.
First I need to finish my work, I’ve got my priorities straight.
I’ll catch a quick lunch at McDonald’s, I’m too busy to watch my weight.

When I was young and looking for love, exercise was my obsession.
My rippled abs and muscled arms on women made quite an impression.
But once I was married with kids to support and obligations to fulfill,
I stopped exercising and I overate. My sex life went straight downhill.

I don’t have time to exercise, I am a busy man.
I don’t have time to exercise, I’ll do it when I can.
I’m the man of the house. Everyone’s counting on me. I am the great provider.
And I’m too tired to move at the end of the day, so my butt’s getting wider and wider.

When the kids fell in love and left the nest to start families of their own,
I wanted desperately to see the world, from Sao Paolo to Cologne.
But my knees were too weak, blood pressure too high, and arrhythmias pounded my heart.
I wanted to work out so I could follow my dreams, but I was too stiff to even start.

I don’t have time to exercise, I am a busy man.
I don’t have time to exercise, I’ll do it when I can.
I wish I could do the things I used to do, when my body could pass any test.
But with mounting pressures and deadlines to meet, it’s no wonder I’m feeling so stressed.

Now I am old and confined to my bed, with new symptoms appearing each day,
I dream of my youth: If I could start over again, this time I would not go astray.
I’d take care of myself. I’d watch what I eat, and get involved in a particular sport,
But I am too old and too tired, too weak and too fat, my time left on this earth is short.

And now,

I don’t have time to exercise.

After writing in my last post about the power of being emotionally in tune with people when they are having a painful feeling, I felt like shit when I failed miserably with my own son. It seemed so easy for the teacher I wrote about to gently accept her young student, who was experiencing a moment of sadness about the loss of her mother. The teacher was sensitive, mature, and not overwhelmed by Julia’s loss, or her feelings about it.

Man, this stuff is harder with our own kids! We are so identified with, and invested in, the well being of our children, that we are often guilty of poisoning them with good intensions. What parent doesn’t want her child to feel good all the time? Certainly, it’s not easy to make that admission, because when we are in our right minds, we know it’s a ridiculous expectation for any mortal. I guess, as parents, we are often selfish, and not even aware of our sneaky methods of manipulating our kids to do what we want them to do, and to feel what we want them to feel. I say selfish, because we love our children more than anything. We want them to succeed, and to have a very small range of feeling: always good. Yes, we may think we are rising to the occasion when they feel bad, but are we? Or, are we working desperately to move them quickly along towards feeling better? It is tricky because there are times when our kids want us to help them move to a more optimistic place, to help them find relief from their despair. In our rush to relieve, we often bypass an important step, which involves looking at ourselves and at our kids. My goodness, it is hard work.

After a long winter vacation, my son and his girlfriend returned to college to continue their sophomore year, and my daughter started up again in her sophomore year of high school. Although I worked while they were on vacation, every other waking hour centered on them. Consumption with the kids was my sole purpose in life. As we ran from one pleasure seeking activity to the next, I recall being haunted by a feeling resembling emotional nausea. We were taking in too much pleasure, the way one eats too much turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and apple pie, during the holidays. We were on a break from our routine, and we all felt like it was our duty to get in as much pleasure as possible.

We started most mornings with an outing to our precious little neighborhood patisserie for coffee, and a sweet buttery pastry. We often lingered for over an hour, enjoying a relaxing start to the day, and the novelty of being with the kids. (I forgot to mention that this “morning” coffee ritual often took place at around 1 PM, after my husband and I had already put in hours of work. After an evening of frolicking with friends till very late the night before, the kids would refresh themselves with sleep till noon.) After our coffee, we were ready to devour our next thrill.