TURN ON YOUR HEART LIGHT…

Tomorrow is our last day OF 2020 in the studio, and at 17.00 we are concluding this legendary workout year on a high note, inviting all our members to attend this last Christmas Cardio fun session.  We`ll share  a glass of champagne and everyone who pitches in a red top will stand a chance to walk away with a pair of Sweatgear pants!

Afterwards we are hosting our Summer Shred Challenge prize giving ceremony to reward our 50 members who have managed to complete this short, intense Challenge.  I will never again say that six weeks are too short to make real changes!  So many of our members have used this last Fitness Challenge to reach their best ever body stats!  I am proud beyond words.

Today is also my last Blog of 2020.  It always takes me twice as long to write the last piece – this one was even harder, because so much has happened this year.  So many people like to jokingly say that 2020 went like: “January, February, Lockdown, Christmas…”  To me it has been the most revealing, knowledgeable, eventful and eye-opening year ever.  More than ever, I have learned that it`s good to do uncomfortable things – it`s weight training for life…

I`ve become quite a fan of the American non-fiction writer, Anne Lamott.  She recently said on Twitter:

“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.  Certainty is missing the point entirely.  Faith includes the mess, the emptiness and the discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.” 

And now it`s Christmas, a Covid-Christmas, and what is left to say?  In her latest novel, “The book of two ways” Jodi Picoult relates the well-known love story of Tristan and Iseult – she describes how Tristan journeys to Ireland to bring back the beautiful Iseult to the king, only to fall in love with her himself.  His uncle sentences them to death – Tristan by hanging, Iseult by burning.

Tristan escapes and rescues her and brings her back to the king out of honour.  Years later, when Tristan is married to another and struck by a poisoned lance, he sends for his first love.  He doesn`t know if she would come…

If she says yes, the ship bearing her response will have white sails.  If she says no, they will be black.  Iseult rushes to be with her old love, and the sails fly white.  But Tristan, too weak to leave his bed, cannot see the ship.  He asks his wife what colour the sails are, and jealous, she lies and says black.  He dies of grief, and when Iseult sees his body, she dies of a broken heart too. 

After they are buried, a hazel tree grows from Tristan`s grave, and a honeysuckle from Iseult`s, and they twine so tight they can never be pulled apart.

The moral of the story?  “Plant your honeysuckle far from your hazel”, I know my superstitious grandma would say.  No, this tragic love story just reminds me that the greatest love story of all times is about to unfold once again as we celebrate Christmas in a few days.

Christmas…that time of year when we all long for childhood and simpler times.  To be six years old again and thrilled that Mom would let you sneak a Christmas cookie before super, delighted to see Dad finally plug in the lights on the tree and giddy at the thought of what wondrous gifts could be under the tree. I remember the homemade bits and bites, the secretly searching in cupboards for presents, After Eight chocolates, the jangle of jingle bells in every song, and the moving hymns sung in church. I reminisce on the evenings we drove through town — “Let’s go for a drive and look at the lights!” —

The holiday season just overwhelms our senses, thereby etching memories from this special time of year forever in our hearts.  But imagine Christmas without a pinch of love.  Seriously!  I`m not sure there would be much point.  Isn`t it love that makes us want to spend Christmas time with family and friends?  And don`t we exchange presents because we love people and want to show them how much they mean to us?

It reminds me of O. Henry’s story, “The Gift of the Magi.”  It tells about a young wife who sells her beautiful hair to buy a platinum watch chain for her husband’s gold pocket watch, while the husband secretly sells his gold pocket watch to get money for a set of combs for his wife’s gorgeous hair. They are left with gifts that neither can use, but they realize how far they are willing to go to show their love for each other, and how priceless their love really is.

You know, the older I get the more I realize that there aren`t any secrets or fine print when it comes to love.  You and I have known everything we need to know about love since we were three years old.  

Love is much simpler than the story of Tristan and Iseult.  To love means that we want people to be happy, we want them to be well, we are terrified at the fact that something bad might happen to them, we want to mourn with them when they are mourning and rejoice with them when they are rejoicing. It means that their happiness is as important to us as our own. And, in a religious sense, it means that we see and understand people the way that God sees and understands them. Love is infinite, unconditional, and absolute.

It`s a mouthful, but always so much easier when it`s Christmas. Let`s use the opportunity of Christmas to say “I love you”. 

As the Midwestern poet James Dillet Freeman once wrote: “Christmas is a wonder … Christmas is believing. Christmas is hoping. Christmas is dreaming. It is a holiday holy to humanity’s dreams and hopes.  It’s not about the words so much as it is about showing up in the world as our glorious spiritual selves, and sharing love, peace, faith, hope and joy with each other.”

In his song “Heart light”, Neil Diamond sings:

“Turn on your heart light
Let it shine wherever you go
Let it make a happy glow
For all the world to see.”

I cannot help but agree with the Canadian writer Mary Balogh: “The idea that love conquers all may seem to be a foolishly idealistic one, but I believe in it, nonetheless.  How can I believe otherwise?”  Even when we`re most sure that love can`t conquer all, it seems to anyway.  It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.  It is a giver of hope.

That`s what “turning on your heart light” means – turning on your hope light.  I turned on my hope light in May 2020 at a point when life was pretty dismal for fitness instructors, when I started teaching online classes on Zoom.  And I guess that`s what Anne Lamott refers to in her book “Almost everything, notes on hope”:  Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”

We are all small fish in this great pond of life who constantly need to learn and master so many new things and skills.   The question is – how are we spending this one and precious life we have been issued?  And how are we going into the new year?  Are we going to spend 2021 trying to look good and creating the illusion that we have power of our circumstances?  Or are we going to taste it, try it, enjoy it, live it, and continue to find the truth about who we are?

It`s my heartfelt wish that all of us would turn on our heart lights this Christmas and give. Yes, give, give, give.  Just a little more. Of our ourselves.  Of our time.  Of our patience.  And of our kindness.  May we cuddle a little more than usual, laugh a little more than usual and love a little harder than usual.

May you have a wonderful Christmas, filled with love, and may you turn on your hope light and your heart light and become a lighthouse.  Because lighthouses don`t go running all over an island looking for boats to save.  No, they just stand there.  Shining.  A lighthouse cannot hike up its rocky skirt and dash into the ocean to rescue the foundering ship. It cannot calm the waters or clear the shoals. It can only cast light into the darkness. But it CAN point the way.

Yours in fitness

Mirna (0827790507)

PS (Our studio opens on Monday the 11th of January but we`ll be active on our YouTube Channel throughout these three weeks.  We are now five subscribers away from 1,5k on our channel! 

If all goes well, my first Blog of 2021 will be published on Sunday the 17th of January.    And the best news? Our monthly will still be R350 in 2021!)