Mental Stuff?

Mental Stuff

This topic has been tumbling around in our heads, at our dinner table (haphazard counter setup, really), and generally pervasive to our existence recently.  How to best capture the idea is uncertain… buzz words seem to consume us these days – hot, fast, and easy – that’s how we all want it.  With this uncertainty in mind, we will somewhat recklessly settle on the phrase “mental health.”  This is a charged and loaded word that, as of late, has been wielded like a fire hose let loose.  Wildly blasting everything in its path, the term is used to push agendas, compartmentalize shit we do not fully grasp, and as a crutch when a foundation of accountability is neglected.  So with that in mind, we tread lightly and use the phrase for lack of something more fitting.  This is not a research piece.  There will not be facts, references, or case studies.  Rather, this is simply a couple of gym owners/social media participants/equally broken people ruminating on something that is troubling…

While it certainly is not our place to speak on mental health with any professional authority, it is absolutely our place to have opinions as humans, friends, managers, and any relationship in between.  The gym is a special place.  Certainly if you’re on our site, reading our nonsense, you are a person for whom the gym is something …more.  A collection of machines, heavy stuff, running contraptions, rubber bands, abused restrooms, sweat soaked clothing is easy to quantify, describe, and experience.  But the experiences in a gym can be so much more, both internally and interpersonally.  Relationships, lessons, experiences, memories, and some form of therapy – as owners we are privileged to tend such an environment.  As owners we are also saddled with at least some responsibility for the wellbeing of those within our space, at least to the extent any man should tend another. (ßshould that be made sexually neutral?  English is confusing.)  And that is what this post is all about – what we see, what we experience, and what the heck we should all be doing about it.

Within our own gym, throughout the town, and around the world, it seems, there is a bubbling cauldron of insanity.  We can only guess it is fueled, accelerated, or at least made more apparent due to social media but the end result is the same – absolute fucking madness.  The intended tone here is genuine, devoid of the typical cynicism or humor we carry into chats on this topic.  Filters, specially sewn clothing, and this bizarrely difficult to quantify obsession with vanity, attention, and validation seem to be gaining traction and momentum.  In some instances, it is confusing, in others it is annoying, and in other yet it is truly alarming.  This is not a new problem – Barbie was put on blast for unreasonable standards.  Models and celebrities have been singled out.  The timeless struggle to find balance between empowerment and vanity in a society that regularly shits on gals is certainly not new.  Gender roles are all over the place.  The final product with any of these considerations seems to be an insatiable hunger to be heard, to be validated, and to be seen in a way that will be celebrated.  Ain’t nothin’ wrong with wanting to be loved but maybe the salient issue is “validation?”  This perpetual motion machine of more is doing strange things people…

Turn on Instagram when your profile is tied into the fitness algorithm and you’ll see a lot of filters, a lot of selfies, and a lot of advertisement.  “I am..”, “ I look..”, “I do..” – it seems to be a constant assault of folks clawing their way from the box of insecurity.  Faces that aren’t ours are hiding nails that have been bloodied by desperation.  Bodies that don’t exist are displayed but only after the digital brush has been applied.  Declarations are emblazoned into captions but not executed by the author.  Selfies are spewed forth constantly, waiting for that like¸ and the next, and the next, and the n… It is this awful, hideous scene in which cogs of insecurity and arrogance and confusion are interlocking with another and mangling the reality that is caught in-between.  This. Shit. Is. Not. Real.

Maybe we, and those who feel similarly, are simply dinosaurs.  Or maybe we are just bitter and jealous because we haven’t yet caught the wave.  Maybe all of this is not an issue of mental health and security but it is simply the evolution of things – a new way to celebrate ourselves and each other.  In the same way Real Dolls might be the evolution of relationships and love...? Unlikely and at a very real cost, if so.

What does this all mean for us?  We don’t know.  We see young girls lying to themselves.  Broken men fooling themselves.  Good people questioning themselves when they should be embracing their reality.  Everyone in the gym is broken.  Hell, everyone is broken, it is simply a matter of how.  Our fear is that whatever path we’re all on now is making those fissures larger, the breakage worse.  All we can do is take note, try to be mindful of ourselves and our friends, and maybe even foster an environment in which it is safe to be “real.”