When I was fourteen, I read in The San Francisco Chronicle that the future of humanity was apparently doomed to unfold inside a giant space terrarium. The article, steeped in optimism and mild insanity, described how overpopulation and resource depletion would eventually force us to evacuate Earth aboard lunar shuttles and live in “closed-ecology habitats in free orbit.” The prophet of this plan was Princeton physicist Gerard K. O’Neill, whose forthcoming book The High Frontier promised solar-powered utopias floating blissfully through the void.
The paper ran lush illustrations by Don Davis: rolling green hills, placid lakes, couples in flowing white linen strolling past solar panels, all living in a pastel Garden of Eden. But something about those inhabitants unsettled me. They all looked frail—thin, pale, gravity-deprived stick figures with the musculature of boiled linguine. That’s when the horror struck me: in space, there would be no gyms. No dumbbells. No pumping up. No gravity—no gains. My future would be a floating hell of atrophied muscles and existential despair. The very thought made my biceps twitch in protest.
At the same time, a girl at school named Jennifer slipped me a birthday card with hearts on the envelope. Inside, she’d written that she liked me and wanted me to ask her out. But how could I ask her out when civilization was on the brink of being exiled to a zero-gravity tofu colony? What was the point of romance when dumbbells were about to become obsolete?
I tore up the card, retreated to my room, and did what any hormonally charged doomsday philosopher would do: I consulted Master Po.
“Master Po,” I said, “how can I go on living if bodybuilding dies in orbit?”
“Grasshopper,” he said, “you live too much for yourself. You must empty yourself of self-interest.”
“But I’m obsessed with myself.”
“Exactly. And it shows in your quest to make your body beautiful.”
“But bodybuilding is my life.”
“And that,” he said, “is your curse. You train your body but let residue accumulate in your soul.”
“So I should quit working out?”
“Not quit. But see your body as not belonging to you. It is part of something larger.”
“You mean, like the universe?”
“Yes, Grasshopper. The body of the world.”
“So, what—you want me to start picking up trash on the freeway? That’s your cosmic wisdom?”
“Once again,” he sighed, “you are far from The Way.”
I looked at my reflection in the mirror that night—fourteen years old, terrified of zero gravity—and realized that maybe Master Po was right. I wasn’t afraid of space. I was afraid of floating away from myself.
Cinemorphosis 
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