The Early Faithful

At a certain hour, before the city has fully remembered its obligations, the gymnasium becomes one of the last respectable monasteries.

No sermons are delivered. No hymns are sung. Yet there they are: the early faithful, entering beneath fluorescent light with water bottles, headphones, and the private determination of people who have made a small treaty with themselves.

It is often mistaken for a social place.

This is because the same faces appear each morning, nodding with the restrained civility of diplomats. No one is there to charm the room. The gentleman on the treadmill is not avoiding conversation because he is unfriendly; he is merely occupied with the important business of becoming less available to his own excuses.

A man may be surrounded by forty bodies in motion and remain entirely alone with his future. There is something unusually hopeful about this arrangement: everyone quietly hauling, pushing, pedaling, stretching, and enduring—not for applause, not for a medal, but because some private version of themselves has sent an invitation.

The bicycle turns. The heart rises. The day, still unformed and pleasantly innocent, waits outside.

And somewhere between the second mile and the first sensible thought, the mind begins to furnish its rooms. A new plan appears. An old worry loses its furniture. A difficult conversation becomes less difficult. One imagines the work ahead, the body ahead, the life ahead—not as a grand miracle, perhaps, but as something which might improve under steady pressure.

The mirrors are often blamed for vanity, which is unfair. A mirror has never made a man vain; it has merely had the bad manners to show him the evidence.

By eight o’clock, the city becomes noisy again. But the early faithful have already had their audience with themselves. And, for one quiet hour, that has been quite enough.