I didn’t want to 🏃🏻♀️exercise that day. I usually love it. I especially love being outside on the trail, but it was too ❄️cold for me. I have conditions- like temperatures. ☀️Sunshine is always good, too. No- this day had to be a gym day, and I just wasn’t feeling it. I drank another ☕️cup of coffee as I scrolled through my social media feed, eating dry cereal from a box. 🤷🏻♀️Finally, the exercise angel on my shoulder beat the couch-potato devil, and I put on my shoes.
The gym was pretty dead except for a couple of people lifting 🏋🏽♀️weights. As I prepared an elliptical machine with the proper settings, I noticed a man on a treadmill in front of me. He was in his late eighties, maybe early nineties. He was dressed in cargo pants, an olive green sweatshirt, a ball 🧢cap, and stability sneakers. I could see the screen on his treadmill. The settings showed a speed of 1.8 with a timer for 30 minutes. No headphones. Not really even glancing at the TV screens above him. He just walked at that consistent pace without slowing down until the end of his preset time.🌟
When he finished the cool-down, he took a step back on the treadmill’s surface and leaned over as he took off his 🧢hat and rested on the arm supports. It seemed like he was in that position too long. I became concerned that I needed to check on him.😳 Then, he slowly got off the treadmill, holding tightly onto the supports as he stepped down, and walked to get the 🫧cleaning supplies from the dispenser on the wall.
He stopped and 👀stared when he returned to the bay of empty treadmills with paper towels and 🫧cleaner in his hands. It took me a second, but I realized why he was standing there. He was trying to figure out which treadmill he had used.🥹 When he finally decided, it was the wrong one. So he 🫧cleaned the machine just to the ⬅️left of the one he used. He tried to do the right thing, though.🌟 He cleaned that other machine thoroughly and threw away the towels before heading out the door. And I 😀smiled as I watched him leave. I was happy I went to the gym that day. I got much more than a workout from my time there.🙌
I don’t need to explain the lesson, right? You get it. I get it. Now, let’s live it.💖
sharing the stairs 