I am sitting on the porch of the vacation place, looking out at the little graveled courtyard and listening to birds chattering. My shoulder does not hurt, nor does my hip. My knees do not hurt, either.

I wish to complain about that.

You see, it is received knowledge that in order to live a long and happy life in excellent shape and avoid pain, you should have certain habits, and I have cultivated those habits assiduously. Among the habits I have adopted for years are regular mobility and body weight exercises—the usual, you know, such as curls, pushups, planks, leg raises, and a nice range of both static and dynamic stretches. I have done them every day for several years now.

And apparently, as a result of NOT doing many of them for a little while, the severe pain I was experiencing lately has gone away.

The latest desperate pain was the shoulder. It wasn’t just uncomfortable, it was a nasty knifing ache that made it impossible for me to lift anything easily, and that made putting a shirt on a very unpleasant experience. I lay in bed at night, feeling it ache, unable to find a comfortable position. I worried that I had torn something, or that arthritis had graduated from mild dysfunction to bone-on-bone. I stopped doing pushups and planks, contrary to all the received knowledge (and the lectures of young friends who have also read all the good advice), and that didn’t help all that much. This week, I just stopped doing any of my exercises before I went to bed. Not a one.

And all of yesterday, my shoulder didn’t hurt. Not until bedtime. I woke up this morning blissfully free of pain.

Maybe, just maybe, I need to leave myself alone for a while. Maybe, just maybe, I have learned my lesson about physical self-improvement and virtuous exertion.

Probably not.

But it’s nice not to hurt quite so much, just for the moment.