If I really think about it, I know the barbell can’t save me.
It can’t offer me eternal salvation. Or money. Or even peace with all my decisions, however difficult they were.
The barbell can’t soothe a crying baby, or cure cancer, or even bring me back that split-second decision to accelerate on a wet North Carolina curve years ago in that little red car.
It can’t make me prettier, or smarter, or more accomplished.
By all rational thought, I should discard the barbell and buy some Mom jeans and take up scrapbooking or Zumba or some kind of “fitness” class wherein I try to dance or gyrate my way into a sexy body. That’s what “sensible women” of my age do, isn’t it?
But I doubt those sensible women have felt the cold steel in their hands. They probably haven’t wrapped their fingers around a 70 lb barbell and snatched it 30 times in a row, in the middle of a 2K rowing sandwich. They most likely have not felt the power of bringing that weight overhead and then throwing it down, rubber bouncing up from the ground, chalk particles wafting like snow through the summer rays of sunshine beating across the floor. Those women still think a workout must involve a cardio machine, and, maybe, if they’re feeling adventurous, a weight machine.
They don’t know they are a weight machine. The years are taking their toll. They can either carry that weight on their hips and their butts and their bellies for the rest of their lives . . . or they can put it in their hands, on a barbell, and toss it above their head. Maybe grunt. Most likely swear. But feel the power. Be the strength. Become dominant over themselves, over others, over the world right in front of them.
Because once you truly experience the power of the barbell, you can’t ever go back. It’s like that part in the old movie “Thelma and Louise” when Thelma says, “You know, something’s, like, crossed over in me and I can’t go back, I mean I just couldn’t live.”
There’s no going back now. Something’s, like, crossed over in me. Weak and mediocre just won’t cut it anymore. I just couldn’t live.
No, the barbell can’t save me . . . because I guess it already has.
