A Humorous Speech presented at Toastmasters LOL Showcase
The world was a scary place in my mother’s mind, and she did everything she could to keep us safe.
She raised five girls that my father frequently fumed “would have been sissies had they been boys.”
She corralled us with a stern look, a wooden spoon, and a firm grasp on Newton’s Law: Kids in motion will remain in motion and kids at rest will remain at rest unless an external force acts upon them.
My mother took it upon herself to be that force.
She firmly believed that “Sit down and stay out of trouble” would spare our lives.
And for a while, perhaps it did.
Somehow, we all reached adulthood, whole in body and mind, even if lacking a lot of confidence, real world experience, and worn-out sneakers.
To my mother’s credit, and her relief, among her offspring there were no cigarettes, or whiskey, or wild, wild women.
No housefires, drownings, or bungee-jumping gymnasts.
There was not a teenage pregnancy, a shotgun wound, or a pulled muscle among us.
Hallelujah! Mission accomplished. Thank you, Jesus.
And despite a steady stream of shoot-’em-up westerns and country music, not one of us grew up to be a cowboy.
Against all odds and infirmities, she kept us safe.
We learned from my mother not to argue with the force, to stay out from under foot, and to vicariously experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat from the safety and comfort of a chair.
They say that “Mother knows best” and I believe that she believed she did. At least she did the best she knew.
Because none of us knew that by the time I was fifty years old, sitting would be declared a lethal activity– or inactivity.
According to James Levine, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, “Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV, and is more treacherous than parachuting.”
I didn’t see that coming, and I’m certain my mother didn’t either.
Though even if she had, she would never have trusted a piece of ripstop nylon to keep me safe while jumping from an airplane.
An act of idiocy like that would surely have warranted stern rebuke: “You haven’t got the sense God gave a goose!”
How could my mother’s well-intentioned plan to keep us safe have gone so far awry?
Could excessive sitting really predict an early demise?
And what can I do about it, now that the damage is done?
According to extensive research, excessive sitting, or “Sitting Disease,” correlates with poverty, obesity, and diabetes.
It promotes cancer, osteoporosis, and back pain, as well as carpal tunnel, depression, and dulled intellect.
It is a causative factor in hypertension, cardiovascular disease, erectile function, and frailty in the elderly.
Thirty-five chronic conditions and diseases, affecting 70% of patients, have been linked to sitting down– on the job, at our computers, and in front of the TV. All. Day. Long.
Dr. Levine estimates American’s spend more than half our waking hours sitting.
This is a problem. And it’s not one more exercise can fix.
An hour of jumping jacks cannot offset eight hours of sitting still.
Because marathon sitting sessions mess you up. They weaken and distort your musculoskeletal structure, impair your metabolism, and alter your DNA.
Did you know that almost every nerve in your body is stimulated when you stand up?
But after just 30 minutes of sitting, the nerves and muscles in your legs shut down. It’s like a major back-up on I-5. Fats and sugars and hormones and fluids throughout your body are stuck in a traffic jam– moving slow if they’re moving at all!
Unbeknownst to my mother, the very worst thing you can do for your body is sit still!
Statistics show that women who sit more than six hours a day are 37% more likely to die young than women who sit less than three hours a day– even among those who exercise regularly. That’s 17% for men.
So what’s the answer?
Just move!
Get up and move. Every. Twenty. Minutes. As if your life depends on it.
Embrace your inner rebel. You know, the one that’s been standing up on the inside all these years you’ve been sitting down on the outside.
Sitting is a convoluted cultural expectation. We want conformity. We sit in chairs, in rows. We exercise in approved intervals. Starting really young.
We label kids and adults who can’t sit still and medicate them until they can.
That’s messed up.
Did you know that desk chairs weren’t introduced to offices until 1940?
Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Charles Dickens, and Winston Churchill all stood at their desks.
Adjustable sit-to-stand desks are trending now, allowing you to smoothly transition your work space from sitting to standing and back with just the push of a button.
By learning to think on your feet, you can flex your muscles, stretch your legs, and uncramp your style.
By literally taking a stand, you will boost your creativity and your cognitive function and activate your own inner genius.
All this, while burning 50 calories an hour, building stamina, and kicking metabolic syndrome to the curb.
So the next time a chair beckons you to sit, decide instead to stand up for yourself.
Remember, you don’t have to take life sitting down.
Because contrary to what my mother told me, sedentary isn’t safe, and the chair really is out to get you!