OPINION
Belknap, my gym, at any time during waking hours, is a veritable parade of nationalities. Sitting on a bench next to the free weights one evening in late 2025, my glaring eyes and my angry heart weary, I felt a sudden joy in sharing space, in harmony, with so many, who for the most part, don’ t look like me. My mouth sat briefly agape as I was suddenly able to feel, so clearly, what had eluded me over the last year while I busily wrung my hands in fear of it all having been lost. I felt the joy of listening to the Spanish around me, the most predominant language in my gym around 5pm on most weekdays, and gazing at the attendant bold, maximalist workout attire of my Latin friends. I felt the joy in sharing space with a large contingent of fellow gym members hailing from sub-Saharan Africa( reminding me fondly of a seminal month I spent working in Cameroon as a resident). I felt the joy of watching queer gym mates exercising both their bodies and their freedom of expression, reflecting the very lavender hue of the walls for which Planet Fitness is famous. I felt the joy of observing groups of teenagers, their academic allegiances identified on the baggy logo sweatpants so popular among those of late Gen Z heritage, working their muscles with weights, their mouths with each other and their eyes with their phones. I felt the joy, while admittedly perplexed, of watching a lady walk on a treadmill, at a pace that would shame even the most leisurely of snails, while wearing a Nigerian Boubou gown with Nike panda kicks.
Sitting on that workout bench, I realized that little, outside of my wife and children, provided more joy in 2025 than existing comfortably, and without fear, in this milieu of humanity at my neighborhood Planet Fitness. Nothing could, or should, feel more American. Yes, a wildly diverse group of people, brought together at one brightly lit point at the epicenter of our adjoining neighborhoods with a shared goal of personal success, was pure joy in an otherwise bleak 2025.
Joy derived from our infinite permutations bound by our common humanity cannot be stolen, even by a tawny-faced Occupant whose artificial tint knows no home in any corner of the natural world. So, for 2026, joy to my gym mates on the Planet of Fitness. Joy to those who would be called garbage. Joy to those who hail from countries likened to holes where the sun does not shine. Joy to those reflecting every shade of the rainbow, even the fulvous who know not what they do. Joy to those on Planet Fitness and to all those on our orb circling the sun. In 2026, Joy to the World … the entire g--d--- whole of it.
Dr. Kolter is a practicing internist with Baptist Health.
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