Are you really happy?

Louis CK is crass and notably funny for taking relatively mundane facets of life, and generally portraying them through heavy use of profanity and treading on the boundaries of moral acceptability. Many of his sketches touch upon the facet of hate, especially hatred of other people. He transforms the morbid interactions among people into hilarious instances, and his overarching tones generally illustrate people as relatively stupid, fat, unattractive, and reprehensible, often times using himself as his most loathed example of the aforementioned derogatory characteristics. In one of Louis' sketches, he aptly points out when you're standing in line at the post office, for example, "... --> you look at someone and form an opinion with no information…and it’s never positive… ‘oh, look at his shoes! What a fuckin’ asshole…ahh, look at that piece of shit, I hope he dies today!’ He’s just standing there, he has no idea you’re just boiling with hate!" It's funny because there's a solid grain of truth anchoring the sketch: I postulate that a majority of people are guilty of forming incredibly negative opinions of others prior to having any legitimate basis for doing so. But why is that? Why do people assume the worst in others before being proven wrong, even though the age-old adage promotes the inverse?

 I think the answer can be found introspectively. I would venture to guess that overt hate or disdain originates from an inherent bitterness in and with oneself; furthermore, I think the bitterness is cultivated over time, it being the direct product of a series of setbacks that one incurs, causing his view of the exterior world to perpetually be negative. This predisposition to disdain and assumptive disappointment in others is a manifestation of internal bitterness, his perception of the outside as an exact reflection of the inherent self-deprecating feelings he has for himself that he then projects onto others. 

The following is purely conjectural, but I often believe that our infatuation with reality TV is an indication of this inherent bitterness. Think about some of the most popular reality TV shows: The Osbournes, Jersey Shore, Survivor, The Bachelor, etc. The unscripted, loose-ended nature of the shows often feature incredibly intense drama, never-ending strings of "bleeps" to censor the hailstorm of expletives, and hysterical crying and shouting. Why do we love watching so much? DH Lawrence once said: -->

"Always this same morbid interest in other people and their doings, their privacies, their dirty linen, always this air of alertness for personal happenings, personalities, personalities, personalities. Always this subtle criticism and appraisal of other people, this analysis of other people’s motives. If anatomy presupposes a corpse, then psychology presupposes a world of corpses. Personalities, which means personal criticism and analysis, presuppose a whole world laboratory of human psyches waiting to be vivisected. If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink, at last, as human psychology.”

We love the "smell," we revel in others' misfortune, we devour the entertaining aspect of others' drama put on public display. Nothing sells like a scandal, or a socially unacceptable breach of societal boundaries. When you incur a series of setbacks, you feel disenchanted with the world and the people in it; you repress the subsequent pain and disappointment, repress the unfair disenfranchisement you feel. But something as powerful as pain and bitterness can only be bottled up so long before the seals break and there's nothing left to contain the miasma of anger and despair. When the floodgate does open, your inherent loving nature becomes poisoned, tainted with this bitterness, which then transforms into the lens through which you view others and the exterior world. I think that's why Louis' joke about hating others irrationally is so funny; why DH Lawrence's apt illustration of "morbid interest in other people" relates so well to reality TV's popularity: your inherent bitterness can find solace and company in others' misfortune, and you can feel okay about preemptively assuming the worst in others. 

Gandhi articulates in his writings that one of his primary impetuses for pursuing religious and racial freedom was driven by a disenfranchising experience he had when riding a train. The ticket he purchased was for a seat toward the front of the train. However, at sudden notice, train attendants asked him to move toward the back of the train; Gandhi refused to comply, arguing that he had purchased a ticket fairly and was afforded the right to sit in accordance with his seating assignment. He was thrown off the train, physically removed from his seat, humiliated in public and debased by others more powerful than him. He described afterward how angry he felt, developing an internal rage over the public humiliation he experienced. Gandhi was able to harness it and use the anger as one of his major driving forces, transforming his rage into peaceful pursuit. 

I think when we're faced with similar junctures in life following major traumatic instances, two very oppositely oriented directions present themselves: you can follow the route Gandhi took, or you can allow yourself to feel angry and hateful. The latter route is a superlatively slippery slope, though: it is a sign of insecure selfishness, as you subsequently assume the worst in others, which ironically, will most likely beget the very negative things you already assume. You get out what you put out, right? But the cloud of disdain in which you enshroud yourself precludes your vision from seeing beyond the six inches in front of your own face; anything that you manage to allow within that close proximity will look ugly no matter what, because deep down, inherently, your own feelings of resentment paint the very perceptions you form. Feeling angry is much easier than assuming responsibility for your own feelings, though; why should I face what I fear most, the face staring back at me in the mirror, when I can easily blame my resentment on outside things that caused it? 

After my brother died, I thought about all the things I said and did to him that may or may not have attributed to his premature passing. Eventually, contemplating so heavily over the subject cultivated an immense guilt, which I then wore upon myself everywhere I went. The figurative weight was so immense, heavier than any physical weight I ever attempted to move. How could I ever again say anything of worth when everything I exclaimed henceforth was followed by tremendous second-guessing? Why would anyone love me after I had let someone so close to me down? How could someone I loved so dearly be taken from me in such an unfair manner? Why me? In many ways I've become stringently stoic, dry, even borderline morbid. Underneath all those layers of crusty stiffness there still exists love, but it's buried underneath unrelenting self-deprecation. When I finally did let someone in, I fell in love, deeply in love. But in retrospect, I think it may have been always doomed to expire because I could never traverse the obstacle in my mind that someone else actually accepted me, loved me truly and genuinely.

How does any of this relate to fitness? Well, it's your body and mind that comprises who you are. We are what we say, what we do, what we eat, and what we think. Your mind will wander and your body will follow in strict obedience. Obesity is a psychological dependence on food in the same way that hyper-activity- overexercising- is a psychological obsession with fulfilling a perceived deficiency within yourself, a physical one or otherwise. If you're inherently angry and bitter, your body will follow: perpetual fatigue, incurable with even the strongest caffeine; disappointment and anxiety over your own physical presence; lethargy and general sedentary behavior. Any mountain can be moved, any physical feat or personal triumph can be accomplished. But before anything can be achieved, you have to move the hardest obstacle that you will ever face: yourself. I lay in bed every morning, waging an immense war within myself, my own mind, trying to cultivate the strength and wherewithal to emerge from underneath the covers. Some mornings are more successful than others, but when a victory does occur, it's an accomplished feeling. Even after all this time, not much has changed other than a more lucid understanding of these own feelings within myself. That's step one. Step two is going in the other direction of the juncture, not feeling selfishly resentful and bitter about being thrown off the train. DH Lawrence also once said: "

--> One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, and the journey is always towards the other soul." So, when you don't feel like exercising, or when you're feeling tired, not just sleepy, but that deep-set fatigue that originates from your bones, your soul, take solace in knowing that there are others who can wholeheartedly, unabashedly, and most purely relate.