Lemmings lemmings everywhere

It is Monday evening about 5:30, and I am trudging away on the elliptical trainer at my gym.
I am hot, I am sweaty, I am sore, and I am wondering why the hell I am bothering to attempt to read the subtitles of 'Ice Loves Coco' which is showing on the TV directly in front of me.

This has become a fairly routine event of late (and hopefully will manage to stay that way.)

Gyms are this thing that I have a hate hate relationship with.
While I understand all the benefits of working out and being healthy and all that good stuff, I can not really get behind the idea of the gym. It is a shrine built around being fit, which in theory is a good thing, only it is more than that.

Sure I look around and I see fat out of shape people. Hell if there was a mirror I would be looking at myself (thankfully my gym has no mirrors in the cardio section). But then I see these other people. I see these thin fit people.

Now I know that to stay thin and fit you have to keep working out, but really, these people are working out more than I am. They are there doing more than I do every single day. Hours out of every day of their life devoted to nothing but exercise.

This is not a bad thing per se, but I have to wonder how many of these people really need that kind of workout. How many of these people are athletes? Because you know if you are an athlete then that is totally cool. I have friends who are athletes and they work out crazy hard to keep up with their sport, because that is part of the whole sport package. You work hard to play hard. That is how it is.

But I have to wonder if all of these people are athletes or if they are just trying so hard to maintain an image. Wasting hours of their days when they could be with friends and family, doing something productive, doing something fun. Yet here they are though, lined up in a row in their yoga pants and sports bras, running in place on their treadmill or climbing to nowhere on their stair climber, looking like a row of lemmings waiting for the cliff to come up and meet them head on.

Is this the result of a society so obsessed with looks, or is this a genuine push for a society obsessed with health? Is either one really better than the other?

What are we heading towards? A cliff or salvation?