Then there’s the gym—a jungle where the rules change every season. Remember when all the gym equipment was just old treadmills and rusty dumbbells? Now there are new people performing rituals that look like a mix of interpretive dance and a medieval torture scene. They use foam rollers like they’re summoning a demon. You try to copy them, and your back pops in a way that concerns you. Meanwhile, the new person is texting their gym buddy about “activating their glutes.” You don’t even know what a glute is, but you sure hope yours aren’t deactivated.
I tried to do a “frog stretch” I saw online. The new person next to me just smiled and said, “Good effort.” I felt like a caveman who saw fire for the first time. It’s fine. The jungle has its hierarchy, and I am not the alpha. I am the guy holding a half-empty water bottle and wondering if I should just go home and binge Netflix.
The Neighborhood Jungle: When a New Neighbor Saves You from Yourself
But here’s the weird part—sometimes these new people in the jungle are exactly what we need. Think of the new neighbor who moves in and finally fixes that blinking streetlamp that’s been annoying you for six months. Or the new coworker who suggests ordering pizza for the team instead of talking about “quarterly goals.” They arrive with fresh eyes and no baggage. They don’t know that Dave always steals the last donut. They don’t care that Karen’s typing is loud. They’re just here, building a fort out of snack packs and optimism.
Amazon Jungle People
I once had a new person join my running club. She immediately asked, “Why are we always running in silence? Let’s listen to 80s power ballads.” The whole group just stared, then shrugged, and now we run to “Eye of the Tiger” every Tuesday. She changed the entire ecosystem. Sometimes the new person in the jungle is a good virus—they break the boring patterns.
