I was waiting in line at the coffee shop yesterday morning when it dawned on me. My legs were tired, my shoulders felt squished, and my lower back was sore. Every single one of my muscles was screaming in perfect disharmony just how weird it feels to be a living, upright human being.
But instead of thinking, “Ugh, I’m getting old” (Hey, I’m only 34!
), I suddenly realized…
…I am literally battling gravity. Every.
Single. Minute. Of.
Every. Day. It was one of those flashes of cosmic truth that freezes you mid-action.
You know the ones I’m talking about – where you’re staring off into space and some poor ignorant barista is blinking at you while shouting, “Sir? You have your debit card in your hand! The machine will take your card!” Damn you and your efficiency!
I’ve been studying biology my whole life. Worked in labs, ran clinical trials, did the whole scientific buffet. But up until that moment, it had never occurred to me that just by waking up in the morning, I’m throwing down the gauntlet on Newton himself.
Have you ever stopped to consider what standing up does to your body? You may think it’s as simple as bobbing back up like a cheerleader after genuflecting to Mother Earth. But let me tell you, it ain’t that simple.
Your bones, your muscles, and every fiber of connective tissue in your body are all at war with 9.8 meters per second per second. “Uh…” I said, tapping my debit card against the swiper. “Sorry.
I’m just really fighting gravity today.”
The poor woman rolled her eyes so hard, I thought they’d get stuck that way. “Make it quick, sir. Your credit card is already hanging out.”
Yeah.
Science brain for the win. I took my coffee to my usual table in the corner and immediately forgot what I was doing there. Because holy shit, how had I not spent more time thinking about this amazing revelation?!
Our entire lives, we spend fighting this giant invisible elephant just to live our lives. Like, what if we redirected all that angry elephant hatred into something constructive? ?
I pulled out a napkin and started doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations. (Hey, cleaning lady, it’s napkin clean up today.) Alright, so let’s think about this.
The average human head weighs around five kilograms. That means right now, your neck is screaming at the rest of your body because you’ve got five kilograms doing stupid gravity feats up above your shoulders. The Earth wants that bag of hot yumyum stuffed into the core, and your neck is doing everything it can to make that not happen.
My head is probably even heavier because I obviously have more brain matter required to calculate meaningless data points while waiting for coffee. The first text I sent was to Mei. “Did you know we spend our entire lives fighting gravity??
Like ALL THE TIME?? ?”
Mei is always there for me. She responded in three long minutes and seventeen seconds with: “Yes Jamie.
We call that standing up. Did you not put the dishes away last night because you were secretly battling the forces of nature?”
Mei doesn’t get it. But I know she will.
As soon as I got home, I got to work. I fashioned a jury-rigged weight vest complete with extra weight in all the natural load zones your body would experience if you were actually standing upright. And then I rigged up a DIY counterforce machine that offset my downward-facing gravity…effectively making me experience about 15% less gravitational pull.
“It kind of looks like you want to be abducted by SPACE PIRATES,” Mei said when she walked into my room. “Define abducted,” I said. She did not fall for my evasion.
Holy crap did that thing feel good though. As soon as I flipped the switch, my entire body relaxed. I could literally feel my muscles unwinding as the constant tug of gravity eased ever so slightly.
I walked differently. I sat differently. And man, when I turned that baby back on…
Chaos.
Welcome to gravity, asshole. What most people don’t realize is that gravity never stops. Not for a single minute of your life are you ever truly free from the steady pull of gravity.
When you sleep, your heart is fighting gravity to keep your blood from pooling in your legs. Your organs are being pushed into your spine as your body mushes itself against the mattress. You’re lying down, sure, but you’re still fighting gravity with every breath you take.
I whipped out my trusty electromyograph (EMG) and strapped the baby onto my head like a rampant turban of scientific pursuit I somehow managed to permanently acquire from my university’s biomechanics lab when my postdoctoral fellowship ended. What I discovered was undeniable. Even when we think we’re at “rest” in standing positions, we’re using multiple muscles all over our bodies just to stay put.
Mother-fucking gravity. It gets better. I decided to up the intensity.
Like most humans who stumble across profound life revelations, I took it upon myself to measure the immeasurable. I started keeping a “gravity diary” where I noted my posture, activity, mood, and overall sense of how heavily gravity was affecting me throughout the day. Guess what?
Stress = heaviest gravity. Anxiety = shitty gravity. In the zone?
Floating on air, my friends. Full embodiment of a magical unicorn. My roommate Josh walked into my room on day three of my little experiment and caught me dangling from my fireman’s-weighted belt while frantically taking notes on my laptop.
“This is what rock bottom looks like,” he said, plunking down into my armchair fortress. “Nope,” I replied. “This is me experiencing about 15% less gravitational force than the universe normally blasts my way.
Dude, I’m rock…UPPER.”
“You look like a hypnotized pawn from a sexy cigar store.”
“The puppet analogy is spot-on, my scientifically discerning roommate.” I nodded sagely at my own reflection in the window. “We’re all just meat puppets dancing on strings pulled by an invisible force.”
He left shortly after that, mumbling about magical science intervention points that he’s obviously way past with me. But yo, I was not done.
Did you know that the human body burns anywhere from 1-2 kcal/min just TRYING to stay upright? Depending on who you ask, that’s anywhere from 960 – 1,920 kilocalories a day just standing up. Just.
Standing. Up. That’s like running 9 miles???
Every day?? ? Some of you are smarter than me and are already realizing that we shouldn’t be upright beings at all.
Humans used to walk on all fours. We didn’t have to hold our boobs up or fight gravity just to exist on this tiny rock we call home. But then something incredible happened.
We stood up. Straight up threw gravity in the face and said, “FINE. WE’RE DOING IT YOUR WAY NOW.”
Upright living is hard.
Upright bodies are not made to be vertical. Our spines alone had to undergo some serious revision to account for gravity. We went from being horizontalDistribution champions to perching our carcasses atop poles thinner than most pencils.
No shit our backs hurt. I eventually got tired of jumping around like a fettered shrimp and stopped shorting my own gravitational resistance. But man, I’ll never look at simple exhaustion the same way again.
Gravity is undefeated.
Let’s face it, we’re all tired all the time. And it’s not because we’re lazy or out of shape.
It’s because each of us is fighting gravity with every.single.fucking-breath we take. So next time you feel yourself getting bogged down by the weight of your own earthly body, just remember…
YOU’RE FIGHTING GRAVITY. Mine too, buddy.
Mine too.
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