You Can Draw Powerful Motivation From Life’s Small Joys

Arriving in Toronto last month to find 4 feet of snow on the ground, I decided to do what any 47-year-old child at heart would do: Build a snowman. Apparently, though, Canada was suffering from a shortage of children at heart. Jennifer, the woman whose job it was to squire me from meeting to meeting, groaned when I called her at home to request some articles from her closet for Frosty’s ensemble.

“A snowman?” she asked incredulously. No doubt she thought that I was completely wacko.

So did the hotel’s concierge when I requested a shovel, which finally showed up in the hands of a bemused engineer’s aide, who looked at me sideways.

An hour later, Jennifer, her assistant Jenny and I tramped through the thigh-high white stuff into the park across the street. At first, they worked reluctantly in the wake of my enthusiasm. But it wasn’t long before their own excitement began to emerge. And as Frosty took shape, we were laughing and throwing snowballs at each other like schoolgirls.

He sported a carrot for a nose, raisins for a mouth, prunes for eyes (there was no coal), a stocking cap atop his head and a scarf around his neck. What a looker. Not a single passerby could actually pass by without at least a smile.

Over the next few days, neither Jennifer nor Jenny stopped gushing about how surprisingly invigorated they felt, and by the time I left town both had resolved to commit to diligent exercise programs.

Now, the thread between building a snowman and working out may seem thin to you. But I didn’t have to ask either of them for an explanation. Because I know that it’s the same thread that connects being alive to the joy of living. Let me explain.

At a dinner party I attended recently, someone coined the phrase “the bitter years” to refer to that period of life when cynicism starts to take its toll. “You’ve been burned in marriage, suffered a business failure or two, you realize that there’s no magic pill to lose weight, and you get bored easily. Life just wears you down.” Astonishingly, to me at least, most every woman present agreed that the bitter years begin in the 40s.

To me, the bitter years begin any time you stop being turned on by life. It’s so easy to allow that to happen. Everywhere we look we’re bombarded by media. The Internet is exploding, music is louder, movies have become special-effects spectacles, and most of television has adopted MTV’s habit of never sticking with an image longer than a few seconds. Meanwhile, everything else promises to be bigger, faster, stronger--and better.

No wonder we go brain-dead. Not only are we overloaded, but we come to expect constant diversion and amusement. It’s up to the world, we think, to entertain us.

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The truth, however, is that it’s up to us to notice life’s little moments and pleasures as a way of staying involved. The old line about needing to stop and smell the roses is as appropriate today as it was 30 years ago, when the overall pace was actually slower.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve taken the same hike along the same trail in the Santa Monica Mountains, always finding something new to appreciate--the outline of a tree against the sky, cloud formations, animal tracks, etc.

And yet, friends who’ve accompanied me as few as three times will comment that they’re bored with the hike. Just as they got bored with their Pilates class or jogging or weight training or aerobics. Even tai-bo kick boxing, which seems to be the hot workout du jour, will inevitably lose some of its practitioners as they become bored and look for the next hot thing.

In my experience, people who exercise or work out diligently are connected to something that turns them on. It could be an instructor whose charisma or style inspires devotion. It could be a sense of accomplishment.

For instance, whenever I do yoga, instead of performing every gesture by rote, I try to make sure that my arm placement is just so and my hips are aligned properly. That’s what keeps my attention focused in the present.

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Or it could be life itself--living the ideal that every moment is ripe with possibility and promise.

So try letting that promise and sense of adventure sweep over you the next time you feel bored with either your exercise program or your life in general. Stop to consider the silence, the smells, the sights. Build a snowman or a sand castle. Appreciate a sunset. Reawaken the childlike delights inside.

And when you move your body, experience the motion of your limbs as something pleasurable by realizing how blessed you are to have that freedom and choice.

Remember, the bitter years are a state of mind. And so is happiness.

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Copyright 1999 by Kathy Smith

Kathy Smith’s fitness column appears weekly in Health. Reader questions are welcome and can be sent to Kathy Smith, Health, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. If your question is selected, you will receive a free copy of her book “Getting Better All the Time.” Please include your name, address and a daytime phone number with your question.