An Illusion of Fitness

I feel rather guilty when I get a seat on the metro. The guilt is partly a celebration of my youth and partly self-deception. I imagine that anybody who can create customised playlists while reading books, rush up staircases to the beat of a song and choose the most aerobic route possible to get to college doesn’t need a seat as much as, well, anybody else does. The metro tells me to offer my seat to someone in need and I wouldn’t dream of disobeying metro rules and requests, such is my tremendous respect for it. So whenever I see someone with a child, someone fighting a losing battle with age using hair colour, someone struggling with their laptop bag or other luggage, someone overweight, someone tired, or someone who has moved towards an empty seat unsuccessfully on more than one occasion, I feel obliged to offer my seat to them. Of course, following the rules so closely means that I rarely sit for over five minutes of the journey. I’ve found that it’s a lot easier to just keep standing. It helps me feel fitter than I really am, counts as a workout in my head and saves me the guilt of sitting when so many more deserving souls wish for a seat. Superfluous courtesies of this sort are all I can afford to be altruistic with and I’m too grown up to play musical chairs every day.