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Imagined Out

Dropped into a Pilates class recently for the very first time in my life and had the experience of walking into a room where conversations had been happening for a long time before I showed up and will continue well after I leave. There were a lot of elderly people in the class and only a minority of the attendees were younger than me. I found that both unexpected and surprising. 

I had imagined Pilates to be something reserved for the young, fit and flexible. When I was all of those things, my life was pretty complicated and over-scheduled, leaving no room for such "improvement" focused activities. I had a simple but effective fitness regimen that I followed - and that was all the capacity I had. The women I knew back then who did go to Pilates class were all blessed with "simpler" lives - they had a spouse, partner or family member who could reliably take care of their children while they were at said class. 

Unlike me they did not have to worry about the next job, next gig and heaven forbid next city. They lived in homes they had lived in for many years by then - my apartments always felt like a waypoint to the home I did not have yet. Somehow my life circumstances of that time and Pilates simply did not mix. Was I right to think that they could not, was there a plausible path to mixing it at least sometimes? There were days when I had some support too - my friends could help, my parents visited from India quite routinely. Any one of them would all be glad to give me an hour to myself once a week - I only had to ask.

So there was no reason for me to believe it was out of the realm and yet I did - stuck with that narrative until a few days ago when I dropped into the class. Do I fit better now that I don't have many of the "problems" I had back then? I realized it was not the lack or presence of the so-called problems but in my decision to put myself in the out-set of my own volition and finding some supporting evidence to do that. Just by waking into that studio, I had chosen to be in not out - that made all the difference, my life circumstances had nothing to do with it. Too bad, some of the simplest changes in life take so long to make and once made, you wonder about all those wasted years. 

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