Being a proper Renaissance man, I recently swore off exercise. Every year, my brain - being the smug bastard that it is - tells my body to get healthy, which usually complies. This year’s embarrassingly brief dalliance with fitness, however, saw my body rebel, invoking Charles Darwin himself.
It all began with a recent viewing of The Fugitive. Harrison Ford just keeps running and running and running in that movie. What if, I thought, a one-armed man killed my wife and I couldn’t prove it and was sent to jail, only to escape thanks to a CGI train crash? Tommy Lee Jones would need only follow the trail of vomit and tears for five minutes before he found me wheezing in the foetal position, begging for leniency.
And so, I’ve spent the past month running and tearing various muscles in an effort to become healthier. It occurred to me last week, however, that it’s all a bunch of nonsense. As I spluttered my way up one of Taringa’s many tortuous hills, I realised exercise and healthy living was the height of human stupidity.
Sexy Dr Oz-types are always strolling around with their chiselled abs and comfy scrubs making everybody feel bad about spending entire Sundays in pyjamas. Despite my complete lack of scrubs and abs, I feel confident in saying they’re all full of crap.
Laziness, I would argue, is the pinnacle of human evolution (at least until we all get sticky gecko climbing hands or laser eyes). Gluttony and excess is our reward for having survived long enough as a species to invent cheese platters and salami sticks.
What’s wrong with enjoying preservative-rich processed food and moving as little as possible? It is, after all, what our ancestors fought so hard for. They did all that sprinting and spearing and gathering so we could eat Pringles and watch entire seasons of Boston Legal in 48-hour periods. Marathons are for barbarians.
Ancient conquerors like Alexander the Great didn’t wage horrific and bloody war so they’d have more space to jog. They did it so everyone would be too scared to say anything when they gorged themselves on exotic meats and slave-picked grapes.
Laziness is a privilege. It is the true sport of kings. Everything around us is becoming lighter and faster - so we don’t have to. Some would argue that exercise is, at the very least, a good excuse to get outdoors - but that’s proper rubbish.
Office workers love to harp on about how their morning run through the local park makes them feel closer to nature. They get this image in their heads of majestic deer frolicking in open fields full of lush greenery and adorable puppies, free from stress and over-crowded public transport.
If, however, anyone ever bothered to ask a deer how it felt about its “care-free” lifestyle, it would probably tell you it didn’t feel very majestic at all. “F*** it,” it would say. “Just f*** it. I am so f***ing tired. I’d kill to just put my hooves up, drink fizzy drinks and play Grand Theft Auto all day.”
When Darwin said “survival of the fittest”, he wasn’t talking about frogs that can hop for 12 hours straight or felines that can outrun small Toyotas. He was talking about fat blokes shovelling garbage into their gobs in Lazy Boys for hours on end - without any trace of guilt. Leave the running to the animals. We’re better than that.
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