We are being killed – by everything. I’m sorry, I did not wish to alarm you. Please remain seated. No, scratch that, for sitting down will be the death of us, as will everything else, it seems.
Another report is out and, as is the way with reports, the news is grim. Once more, we’re told that sitting down is bad for us, but this time they (Cambridge University) have put a figure on it: sedentary work lifestyles cause 90,000 unnecessary deaths a year.
I’m sure other factors come into this, such as whether you drink, eat sausages or have your hair in a centre-parting (sets up a centrifugal force in the brain, shifting it on its axis slightly, thereby increasing the risk of stroke).
I hope I haven’t given centre-parted readers a stroke with my little joke (reader’s voice: “Very little”). But you get my gist or pith. Every day, everything we do is killing us.
Needless to say, the remedy is – all together now – exercise. An hour a day for those who work 9 to 5, which means 8 to 7, plus your commute, which will get you home at 8pm, plus ten minutes to get changed, five minutes for an argument with the spouse or cat, 15 mins’ drive to the gym, an hour there, 15 mins to shower and change, another 15 mins back, 5 mins to microwave and set out your tea, which you sit down to eat at 10:05pm, which means you won’t sleep well, which will shorten your life.
You could of course go running instead of attending the gym but that will knacker your knees. Or you could go cycling, but everyone else will hate you. Still, that doesn’t seem to put folk off. Today, our cities put Sparta to shame, with joggers and whatnot puffing grimly everywhere. Were Leonidas to return, despite all his training in the agoge, he would be agog, doubtless remarking: “You have taken this physical activity malarkey too far.”
And yet we are dead on our feet. Or on our butts. We cannot win. We cannot wine. We cannot even open a tub of hummus because a report out yesterday suggested dips were often deadly, being loaded with salt and fat by the capitalists who despicably adulterate our food to make it palatable.
We cannot watch a boxed set to take our minds of it all. Neither can we meditate and calm our fear-filled minds because we cannae sit doon oan oor zafu noo. That’s an interesting thought, actually. No, it is.
If we sit doon and meditate for half an hour, as often advised, our minds might relax but our bodies will be giving up the ghost. There may be some truth in this. As you know, when Bodhidharma first visited the Shaolin Temple, he found the Buddhist monks were out of shape and ailing. So, being an Indian, like, he taught them yoga, which the pugilistic Chinese modified into kung fu, which even today keeps you fit and causes MMA fighters to die laughing at you.
According to my researchers, many of you are not Buddhist monks. However, you are right sedentary, and there are wee exercises you can find online for you to do as you sit at your supermarket till.
Indeed, taking a closer look at the Cambridge report, I see it says you don’t have to go daft by getting on a bicycle, for example, and ruining the quality of life for others, perhaps violently attacking pensioners in your way or forcing pedestrians off previously peaceful pathways.
No, even just getting off your butt and going to the water dispenser will help you to live. If your office doesn’t have such a facility, I suppose you could just go and micturate every half an hour, though disappointingly I cannot see any mention of micturition in the Cambridge report’s table of contents (first thing I always look for). I imagine too that, if male at least, you would run the risk of ridicule by colleagues whose prostates are still in fine working order.
What a life, as my old Auntie Jessie – arguably the leading existentialist philosopher in all Leith – used to say every hour on the hour. She’s dead now, of course. And she’d never even heard of hummus.
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