4:27:01
My body is sucking lactic acid like it’s water. It’s scorching and muggy, late August afternoon. The tendons, the muscles are screaming out in agony. I’m thirsty, I’m angry; I’m out of shape. My right foot pushes the pedal; my left knee pulls the pedal. They work in unison. They hate each other. My back, which is drenched in sweat stretches over the gears. I ascend. My ass hurts. I refuse to be defeated.
I dramatize the situation, I say to myself, “Auna, If you were to die at the end of this battle wouldn’t you have wanted to enjoy yourself.”
My response to myself is, “Bugger off.”
4:28:54
The salty liquid is pouring from every pore. I taste the bitterness. The numbers won’t change. I breathe. They don’t change. I beg and plead with God.
4:29:21
They are moving slowly. I try to motivate myself, “Enjoy the moment Auna. Love the moment. Love it. Embrace the pain. Use it as fuel. Fuel damnit. The carbs I enjoyed last night, along with that red wine don’t seem to want to be fuel.” So instead I turn the music louder. I turn to Britney. Help Britney. Give me rhythm. Make me love torture, loosely coined for cardio.
4:29:52
The red seconds flirt with my lungs. Britney encourages me from my iPod and every ounce of purpose in me envisions a sexy pair of jeans. My jeans. On me.
My mantra: “Me in jeans.” “Me in jeans”
I choke. Then gasp.
4:30:00.
The end. It’s over. My heart rate slowly dips into the 150s. I growl, I pant, I gulp. I glance at the woman on the elliptical glider next to me; she is lazily reading a magazine. I judge.… “Why bother if you don’t exhaust your heart rate. I see my own magazine thrown to the floor and reconsider. She is probably nice and not in the mood for self-mutilation today. The man behind me is wearing too short of shorts. He is checking out the woman reading the magazine. He is bench-pressing 280.” I forget that I’m miserable and my heart is pounding too loudly for my rib cage and I’m embarrassing myself.
My clock reveals 4:30:43
How did forty-three seconds just pass? I only glanced around the room.
The cool down goes so fast. I’m not hurting; I’m not begging the clock to change. There is no personal friction: Me against time. I’m instead just going, rolling, and being part of the clock that dictates our lives. It’s different when you’re not watching it end.
4:31:11
Where do the seconds go?
They, those philosopher types say that youth is wasted on the young. And as my birthday is quickly approaching I don’t happen to disagree with them. The more we have, the less it means? Does the more time equate to the more, value we can create? Not the material kind, but rather the intellectual, the experiential, the beautiful memories that require depth and certitude; the relationships that are delicately woven together through years and seasons and holidays and sadness. The adventures where strangers rescue you, and you in turn find yourself. I sound esoteric; work with me. Can we ever find enough time to have fun? To pound our chest like Tarzan and throw worry to the wind?
If there is one characteristic I would permenty remove from my plethora of characteristics (you know my whole balance sheet theory) it’d be pride. Well pride + stubborn = waste of time.
How could we prevent ourselves from wasting the precious moments that eat up our nights, the days in which we can never return? The Chinese food gone gross, and the compliments gone unheard. The conversations left in the closet, and the text messages waiting as drafts on phones lost in a cab somewhere in New York City. (Clearly I’m speaking in first person.) We operate in a microcosm where we’re so tightly knit, so closely connected and moving so fast. We jet around in small cars, communicate via internet and fly to the other ends of the earth and help starving infants as means to “get away” from our gluttonous, American lives.
Why is that? Should we change? Should we adopt Vegan characteristics and roam with the animal herds before we outsource more innovation to India and China? Not to sound like a Debbie Downer, but when I think of time I often wonder, is time relative. Or rather are we too busy accepting time, ignoring the moments and finally too lazy to fight the calendar. What if we pushed time – worked so hard and sweated so much that every second counted for something, assigned to a success, donated to a cause. Each second would become a building block; hours became the info structure of our lives. And the late nights turned into dawns, and the sleepy Sundays so relished, become the strength that ultimately defines us? Let us not be afraid to live our lives with passion and hunger.
And then, maybe, we can understand the importance of fighting time. We have already mastered the art of maximizing oxygen every time we inhale, especially when standing in a rose garden.
Now our job is to linger as long as possible, to make the scent last forever. It isn't that we must remember every moment; it’s only to remember not to waste it.
