The Judgment Treadmill
“The Judgment Treadmill...Sometimes the real workout is admitting you’re an idiot.”
Living between Texas and LA is fantastic, as I appreciate the unique charms and overlook the overly politicized drawbacks of each place, purposefully ignoring the elephant in the room to engage the rare independent thinkers in the middle of the discussion. I’ve always taken pride in being open-minded and non-judgmental. I mean, we are all biased, but I try to consciously check myself before jumping to conclusions, give the benefit of the doubt, and generally refrain from wrongful social convictions.
When I’m in LA, I look forward to workouts with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever heading to the dog park. The perpetual sunshine and cool breezes elevate my mood, convincing me I can lift heavier, run faster, and generally transcend mortal limitations—reality be damned.
The only downside to my LA workout is that I trade my personalized home gym in Texas for a public one with surfaces baptized in the bodily fluids of strangers. I liken it to eating with a lightly washed fork at a West Texas truck stop; you just can’t think too hard about what (or who) came before, or you can’t function.
This particular Saturday, I woke at 5:30 AM with the righteous energy of someone about to have the entire gym to themselves, and for thirty blissful minutes, I did. I cranked through my routine with only podcasts and delusions of athletic prowess for company. A woman soon arrived and claimed one of the four treadmills, earbuds in, minding her own business. Like me, she was a fellow member of the Church of Leave Me Alone.
Three minutes later, everything changed.
An overweight man shuffled in and parked himself on the treadmill directly next to her—his phone blaring on speakerphone so we all had the privilege of being part of his fascinating conversation. He had a balding, sleep-ruffled head of otherwise thick hair, as if someone had given up halfway through inflating a beach ball, a scraggly, groom-optional beard, and gym shorts paired with flip-flops. I felt certain this guy had gotten dressed in the dark during the last LA earthquake. Even from across the room, I could see he was spectacularly out of place—a wildebeest wandering into a migration of gazelles.
Then—and I cannot stress this enough—he began disrobing.
Off came the sweatshirt, revealing a stained tank top, gold chains, and enough chest hair to stuff a throw pillow. He kicked his flip-flops aside with casual indifference to any concept of hygiene, and, before I could process what was happening, began walking barefoot—barefoot—at a leisurely three mph, barely keeping his balance as he continued conducting his phone conversation on the treadmill directly next to this poor woman.
Then it hit me: What an asshole I am.
Here I was, “Mr. Non-Judgmental,” gawking like a tourist at a roadside accident, when this gentleman could be on the first day of a life transformation, amidst a resolution to get healthy for his family, or simply following doctor’s orders after a health scare. Maybe he was finally ready to invest in himself after years of neglect. Who was I to judge someone brave enough to start somewhere, anywhere, even if that somewhere involved questionable footwear choices?
The woman apparently hadn’t achieved my level of enlightenment—she immediately abandoned her treadmill and relocated to the opposite end of the gym as if he were patient zero of some new plague. I felt sorry for my new gym brother, probably feeling judged in this superficial LA environment when all he wanted was to better himself.
I spent the next thirty minutes working up a sweat and glowing in my newfound compassion. When I finished working out, I decided to walk over and exchange a meaningful “sup” with my gentle, misunderstood gym mate—maybe even offer some encouragement.
I approached and stood nearby, waiting for his acknowledgment. Not noticing me, he scooped up his flip-flops, grabbed a loose cigarette from his discarded sweatshirt, and stuck it between his lips while still barking into his phone—his voice carrying across the gym in broken English: “Yeah, I got stuff in trunk. No, they ain’t check there. Sargis got connect but move Tuesday.”
He paused, looking up at me as if telling me to wait while he listened for his conspirator’s response. Then he looked down and launched back in:
“No more talk! I walk all morning looking, and you not there. What about cops? Tell Sargis they are watching! Now go, or you swimmy-swimmy with fishes!”
He looked up at me again, now red-faced, with spit from his tirade glistening in his already-questionable beard. My struck-by-lightning expression surely gave away the look of a humbled man realizing he was catastrophically wrong—a man who prides himself on trusting his instincts yet ignored them anyway.
“Sorry,” he said, covering the phone. “My wife—she don’t listen good.”
Facetiously, I nodded, rolling my eyes as I backed away—my charitable interpretation of his character crumbling publicly. As I headed for the exit, I caught sight of myself in the mirror—the same guy who’d spent thirty minutes congratulating himself on his enlightened perspective, now practically sprinting away from his “misunderstood gym brother.”
I realized I’d just completed the most honest workout of my life. Not the physical kind—the kind where you discover that your capacity for self-deception runs deeper than your commitment to non-judgment. I’d managed to be simultaneously prejudiced and self-righteous, judgmental and naive, all while maintaining the comfortable fiction that I was above such things.
The woman who’d fled the treadmill was probably home by now, telling someone about the weird guy at the gym. Meanwhile, I was left with the unsettling realization that maybe—just maybe—we’re all running on our own judgment treadmills, convincing ourselves we’re making progress, yet going absolutely nowhere.