Overpowered by Funk

So it felt really good to be back in the gym and the pool. I’d been out for maybe a couple of weeks, which followed a couple of erratic weeks.  I like maintaining consistency in my workouts – it’s the only “me” time I really get, and the effort of pushing my body to and beyond its limits is a great way to free the mind.

So tonight I found myself struggling because I’d been away for so long.  After age 40, it’s normal to lose about 1%/year of your lean muscle mass (though not, apparently, of your fat…).  I first saw a deterioration in lean muscle mass last year at age 58, and I’m determined to reverse it, so any difficulty swinging weights after a break really concerns me.  Then to make matters worse, somebody was really funky.  Not just normal gym sour sweaty funk, but that nose-curdling BO that comes when someone has had a major deodorant fail.  We swing bells in a small enclosed space with no ventilation (they have fans, but because we sweat so much, nobody likes to use them), I’m working hard and this person is imitating a skunk.  I found myself getting really mad, because the smell prevented me from focusing on my workout.  It’s a gym.  It’s a late night kettlebell class, so there’s lots of guys and lots of people who have already worked out for a few hours.  We’re used to stinky.  This was out of the ordinary, the kind of stink that just hunts you down, overpowers you and suffocates you. 

So I’m mad, and then it occurred to me that this stink is just like sin.  Sometimes other people’s sin is so stinky, so offensive to us, that it seems to pervade our very being.  But we’re not in this world to judge other people’s sin any more than I’m in a gym to evaluate another person’s funk.  I go to the gym to work out, not to smell people.  I suppose I could have tried to do like I do when I pass by garbage, and either mouth breathe or blow your own air into your nose, but instead I just focused on the reason I was there.  I tried to squat a little deeper and swing a little higher.  Before long, I was so busy having my butt kicked by my own routine that I didn’t have time to be bothered by the overpowering funk.  Yes, it was still there; whenever we took a water break or did partner work I could certainly smell it.  But when I kept myself busy doing what I was spozed to do, it didn’t bother me so much – it didn’t have quite so much power over me.

We live in a world where everything with which we don’t agree is either theologically anathema or legally actionable. Everything with which we don’t agree is like that overpowering funk, and its effects upon us seem to have no end.  Perhaps if we focused on ourselves a bit more (or since I’m Methodist, I’ll suggest JW’s three simple rules: Do No Harm; Do Good; and Stay In Love with God) – maybe if we focused on what it is WE’re supposed to be doing, maybe other people’s funk wouldn’t overpower us.  And maybe, just maybe, if we all focused on what it is WE’re supposed to be doing, not only would the funk not overpower us, but maybe we’d discover – new deodorants, new methods of hygiene, and who knows what else?  But we can’t let the funkiness of sin (or any other funkiness) overpower us and render us ineffective. Even in the face of seemingly overpowering funk, we have to find a way to funktion.