My nephew JD sits on the couch next to me, wearing the Spider-Man costume I brought for him, sans mask.
“I need to write a blog post,” I said casually, as we watched a Bob Ross painting show. My niece and nephew don’t love Bob Ross, but they know I do and so they put it on for me. (For about five minutes).
JD turns to me with his big blue eyes.
“What’s a blog post?”
As someone who isn’t around kids very often, I’m not accustomed to these questions. I was just talking aloud.
“Well,” I said. “It’s….uh…kind of a story…”
“About what?”
Well, isn’t that a good question – given that I am actively looking for a topic.
“Sometimes I try to help people find motivation,” I said.
“What’s motivation?”
Have I mentioned that I’m not around kids much?
JD is eight and my niece Ady is 10. So far this morning, we (and my 74-year old mother) have played basketball, baseball, drew on the sidewalk with chalk, then we worked on our squats and our lunges and now we’re inside for lunch.
“Sometimes people don’t feel like doing things,” I told them. “Like exercise.”
JD, who has professed wanting to be a personal trainer when he grows up (insert proud Auntie moment here) was baffled.
“People don’t like exercising?”
When they are finished eating lunch, we’re going outside to play some more baseball. Then we’re going to get in the pool. Then we might work on our golf swings. Then back in the pool. All we’ll do is move. And that’s all we did when I was a kid.
No one ever told me I had to, though my parents were never fans of video games. They wanted us to go outside, but they never said what we had to do outside.
It’s a funny thing to try and explain motivation to kids. At what point do we lose our desire to just move because we like doing things? Is it when people tell us that we have to do it? Or when we finally develop the self-awareness to judge ourselves for not doing enough?
We’ve spent the morning doing things with no outcome expected. No moving to lose weight, no measurements attached.
We just…played.
I think sometimes we assume that if we’re not “exercising” it doesn’t count. Well first of all, who decides what counts? And second of all, do you enjoy gardening? That’s moving and doing. What about walking? Golf? Playing with your kids?
The nice things about being with JD and Ady are the reminders to not overthink things. Like, anything.
Sometimes things really can be that simple.