10 August 2006

My Body, My Self.

This summer has not been the best, health-wise, for my family. My Papa passed away, my Grandpapa has been in and out of the hospital, my grandma Betty (my cousin's grandma) has been in and out of the hospital, cancer came back in my cousin's mother-in-law, and my mom has to have surgery. This is just the big stuff. In light of all this, I have been thinking about other peoples' bodies, and my own.

So often I hear people putting down their bodies. Their body is never good enough, too skinny, too fat, not curvy enough, too bottom heavy, too top heavy, one ankle bigger than another (maybe that's just me). We are never happy with our bodies. We abuse our bodies (no exercise, overexercise, eat too much/little, drink, smoke, drugs...the list goes on), and then complain about them.

But seeing all these people sick, and some gone, it makes me appreciate my body more. My body is healthy. It has it's aches and pains, but it is healthy. It carries me each day, through my walk to work and sometimes back up the hill to get home. It carries me to the gym when I can get up, or to run days.

And it carries me, despite me not listening to it. When it needs sleep, I wake up early. Yet rather than rebel, it often does it best to fight through whatever I deprived it. When I am hungover and my head feels as though it may explode, it wakes up, gets to work, and doesn't expire. When I eat too much, and forget to exercise, it does its best not to add on the extra pounds. And I am in awe.

I try to keep all of this in mind when I am complaining about myself, and I wish others would, too. When I see the ravages sickness has had on so many people, I almost appreciate that my only problem is that I am a little heavy or my ankles don't match. I am strong, and I am lucky.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You'll get more conscious about this stuff as you grow older and start seeing what happens to certain unfortunate members of your own demographic cohort. I'm an active 61 and see many of my friends in the process of falling by the wayside.

Corvinus (on BootsnAll.Com)
Jim Paris (in real life)