My Gym Motivation Is Watching Other People Work Out — Until They Start Talking

One of the recurring themes of my daily life is that I think about the gym. A lot. Mostly while binge watching fitness and stomach crunches shorts on YouTube or doom scrolling reels on Instagram.

Watching them gives me a tremendous amount of motivation. To watch more of them.

On the rare days I actually make it to the gym, my motivation to flee to another treadmill comes in bursts.

Some of my fellow gym goers are mega yappers. More talking in one hour than my teenager would engage with me in an entire year.

Yesterday was one such day. And to my brilliant luck, I had forgotten my AirPods. No shout-out to Steve Jobs, although bless his heart. I can’t speak ill of the dead right now.

As I tried to climb the StairMaster and watched infomercials on mute on the giant screen in front of me, the pain on my face must have been obvious. Routine acquaintances who normally would nod or wave suddenly seemed very reluctant to make eye contact.

I finally figured out the source of my discomfort, as I spotted the yappers next to me.

“Why is this lady talking to her friend at the top of her lungs?” This was the recurring question in my mind for the next one hour.

Yeah yeah, I know all that Eastern philosophy crap. “Chaos is not on the outside. It is only on the inside.” Or something like that.
That was not coming to my rescue.

I paused my StairMaster climb in a hurry and walked over to their machines and asked them if they could please quiet down.

They stared at me in deep wonder and surprise as if I was mistaken about how quiet they had actually been. After not getting a response, I just looked away and started walking back to my machine.

On a recent flight to Calgary, Canada, an uncle, possibly in his mid 70s, was blaring out his Punjabi soap series so loudly that I was jolted out of my sleep and eventually had to beg the flight attendant to end the torture for all of us. 

Imagine the incredulity of the uncle when the flight attendant asked him to put on headphones, and his son sitting next to him suggested that he switch off his screen.

He pointed to himself and asked, “Are people talking to me?” 

Anyway, what shocked me more, though, was the tolerance level of the people around us.

Amazing. 

There’s hope for humanity, I thought.

Or maybe it’s just my age. I’ve simply reached that stage of life where sounds I once tolerated now feel like a personal attack to my senses.

Anyway, back to the gym. 

A lady who had been next to me was laughing hard and told me that someone had been playing Young Thug loudly in the sauna the other day.

I told her I was a closet hip-hop fan, but I still would not have appreciated music being blasted in the sauna.

Less than a minute later, she dropped the weights on her machine with a spectacularly loud thud.

Our eyes met, “I am used to it by now,” I told her.

We both chuckled.

As I got into my car later, I wondered if language might have been a barrier with the ladies. But instead of gaslighting myself, I started wondering if these ladies were simply tone-deaf.

Which brought me back to my grandmother.

My grandmother was both tone-deaf and hard of hearing. Two days before my wedding, she lamented that my husband was too dark for her taste. I was 22 and tolerant back then.

My goal is to eventually travel to India and stay there for a few months at a time. Considering how well I am doing with loud sounds, I’m not sure how I will do there.

But if I am anything like my grandmother, I may not have to leave my ears behind after all.

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Observations, Opinions, and Cultural Critique

Cultural Essays from a Life Lived Between Worlds