The Sweating Privilege….dilemma?

spanduk mamang gorengan [cc: mamang erwin]

Just recently, I came across an article writing from someone online about buying gorengan from a street food stall around 1 PM in Jakarta, around dzuhur time. She was standing quite close to the seller and suddenly realized how hot it was. Not just for her, but for the person standing right beside the frying pan. It made her think, if it is already this hot just standing here for a few minutes, imagine having to stand beside that frying pan for hours. It must be even hotter for the mamang gorengan.

She finished buying her gorengan and continued walking to the mall. Then, within literally a few seconds after entering, she could feel the temperature drop. The air conditioning. The cold, refreshing mall temperature. While she was still holding her gorengan, she suddenly thought about how maybe 10 seconds ago, she and the mamang gorengan were standing in almost the exact same temperature. But now she was comfortable, probably a little chilly, while the mamang gorengan was still there, standing in the heat and doing his job.

Of course I don’t personally know the mamang gorengan. I don’t even really have gorengan as my go-to snack. It was probably one of the most unlikely things for me to experience myself. But reading that post somehow stuck with me.

Because it made me think about how privilege doesn’t always have to be this grand thing.

Sometimes, privilege is simply having the option to choose.

And recently I’ve started noticing this in my own life too, especially through something as simple as running.

I’ve been trying to improve my 5K recently. I started around pace 11, then got to 10, then 8, and somehow recently hit a personal best around pace 7. Obviously, I’m happy about the progress. But then I started thinking, how much of this journey was actually made possible because I had the privilege to choose how I wanted to sweat?

I have a treadmill at home.

I can choose whether I want to run at 6 AM, 10 PM, or whenever I feel like it.

I don’t have to think about whether it’s raining, whether Jakarta is unbearably hot, whether the road is safe, whether there are too many cars, or whether I have to travel somewhere first just to start exercising.

I can put on my shoes, turn on the treadmill, and start running.

Even my decision to run is already a choice.

I can choose whether I want to do my 5K around my housing complex, at GBK, around Setiabudi, or somewhere else.

I can choose the route because the scenery is nicer.

I can avoid roads with too many cars and motorcycles because I don’t want to breathe all that pollution.

I can decide that I only want to run in the evening because that’s when I have the time.

I can choose the equipment I want to use, the shoes I want to wear, the pace I want to chase, and eventually, the kind of sweat I want to experience.

That sounds very normal when you’re living with those options.

But that’s exactly the point.

The privilege is so basic that we don’t even recognize it as privilege anymore.

I then reflected on another very coba-coba experience of mine when I joined the judge crew for the first HYROX Jakarta 2026. It was very random and out of nowhere that I managed to somehow judged the Wall balls station, the final station before finish. I got the chance to be part of the team, go all the way to PIK, meet and mingle with people from different backgrounds and nationalities, and experience from an environment that I probably wouldn’t have entered otherwise.

But then I thought about it again. The privilege wasn’t only that I got the spot. It was also that I could actually get there. PIK is absolutely far from home. I had a way to get there. I had enough flexibility with my time to spend the day there. I could simply say, yaudah coba aja dulu, and go.

If I wasn’t privileged enough in that sense, even if I got the spot, I might still not have been able to take it.

And that’s something we often forget when talking about opportunities. We tend to think that an opportunity means someone gives you a chance, and that’s it. But sometimes, there are five other things behind that opportunity that make it possible for you to actually take it: transportation, money, time, flexibility, energy, and access.

You need to be able to reach the opportunity before you can benefit from it.

And it gets even more interesting when you start looking at our everyday lives.

You go to Pilates or yoga and suddenly think, hmm, this top and bottom don’t really match. I think there is other more suitable pair. The old ones are still perfectly wearable. They work completely fine. But you have the option to buy another one because you simply prefer the color combination.

You do yoga because you want to improve your flexibility, not because your body needs to be flexible enough to clean the windows of a high-rise building.

You run because you want to improve your 5K, not because walking is the only way you can get from point A to point B.

And I think that is where the whole thing started to hit me.

We are privileged enough to be able to sweat optionally and occasionally.

We can choose when we want to sweat. Where we want to sweat. How we want to sweat. With what equipment. For what purpose. And, perhaps most importantly, whether we want to sweat at all that day.

Meanwhile, there are people whose sweat isn’t optional.

Think about the blue-collar contractor whose job is to paint parking-lot markings under the Jakarta sun (real life example that I encountered recently as my office parking lot just got repainted). He can’t look outside at 1 PM and decide that it is too hot and he will do it tomorrow. He can’t decide that today he’d rather work somewhere with air conditioning. This is exactly the same thing as the mamang gorengan from the beginning. He can’t choose not to fry the gorengan. He can’t escape the heat and walk into the mall. Because if he did, who would sell the gorengan? Who would fry it? How would he make the money he needs for his and his family’s day-to-day necessities? It’s his job. It’s his responsibility. The sweat comes with the work he needs to do to keep his life going.

Meanwhile, I can decide that I want to run 5K because I want to improve my pace from 11 to 7. That’s a very different kind of sweat. And perhaps that’s the most basic privilege we often overlook:

the privilege to sweat by choice.

Not because we are necessarily richer, more successful, or living some luxurious life, but simply because we have enough room in our lives to decide, today I want to run, today I want to do yoga, today I’ll go to GBK, today I’ll stay home, or today I don’t feel like sweating at all.

And every person has a different amount of that room.

That’s why sometimes I think we need to be a little more careful when looking at other people’s choices and asking, “Why don’t they just do this instead?”

Maybe they just simply….can’t. Maybe the option that looks so obvious from where we’re standing simply doesn’t exist from where they are. Maybe they aren’t choosing the worse option. Maybe that’s simply the best option available to them.

At the end of the day, they’re also just trying their best with whatever choices they have. We’re all just doing our best in this one lifetime.

I think there are two things that come after realizing this. First, be grateful. Not just for the big things. Not just for being able to go abroad, stay in a nice hotel, buy luxury brands, or suddenly decide that you want to fly somewhere for the weekend. Those are obviously privileges. But so are the incredibly boring, basic things that we don’t even bother to notice anymore: having air conditioning, having a treadmill, having transportation, having time, having choices, and being able to decide where you want to sweat. These things can feel ordinary when they are part of our everyday lives, but ordinary does not mean universal.

Second, if we happen to have more choices than someone else, maybe we can use some of that privilege to make more choices available to the people around us. It doesn’t always have to be some massive social movement. It can be as simple as helping someone access an opportunity, giving someone a ride, sharing knowledge, making a workplace more comfortable, helping someone learn something, or simply making someone else’s day a little easier.

We can’t always wait for another person, another institution, or even the government to step in and fix everything.

Sometimes, the movement starts from us and the very small community around us.

So I guess this is just a reminder to myself, and maybe to whoever happens to stumble upon this writing: be grateful that you have the privilege to sweat.

So hopefully, we can be a little more grateful for what we have, a little less judgmental about the choices other people make, and if we have the power to do so, help make better choices available to someone else too. Hopefully everyone gets to have a joyful day, a good day to close, and something to be grateful for before going to bed. Because the real privilege isn’t never having to sweat.

It’s simply having the choice of when, where, and how we sweat.

Originally voice recorded my thought like 1AM early in the morning in July 2026, recapping the whole thing in early Aug, published mid Aug 2026 later on, of course in 00AM.