This is a continuation from Wednesday’s post…So if you missed Wednesday’s post go back and read it before you read this…If you’re back for the dramatic conclusion…Read on and thanks for your patronage.
Now…I want to tell you about one last conversation I had with my Sister-in-law. She brought all this madness home for me and put it in a nice little package. It’s the title of this post.
You should know that my SIL is slender and beautiful and is apparently one of the only women I know who IS happy with her body. She told me the women in her neighborhood are ALL thin and seem to know they are thin. Even so, she reports they do nothing but insistently talk about the way they WISHED they looked. The big trend in her neighborhood is to have (or yearn to have) plastic surgery. Everyone wants an augmentation, liposuction, or a lift or tuck of some kind.
My SIL, who is a very grounded and practical person, is on a mission to convince these ladies that they can and should be happy right now. She said this to them. “This is as good as it gets. We’re in our late 20ies and early 30ies. This is as good as we’ll ever look. If you can’t be happy with the way you look now, what are you going to do in 15 or 25 years when you start to age and have wrinkles on your face and things start to sag? How will you feel about yourself then if you’re already miserable now?”
Her message is that you better save some of that self-loathing time for down the road when you really do have something to feel bad about.
It literally seems crazy, and makes me feel crazy that SO MANY WOMEN (even those who have every right to feel proud of their accomplishments) cannot be happy IN and WITH their own bodies. I get caught up in my own self-pity from time-to-time, because my body isn’t perfect, but then I realize I cannot allow myself to waste mental energy on this black-hole of a thought process.
Our bodies are wonderful machines capable of doing so many varied and wonderful things. It’s my dying wish (I’m not dying) that women spend more time thinking of things they want to do with their bodies instead of thinking about the shape of their bodies.
If you’re self-loathing over your body image consider this an invitation to STOP and redirect your energies into something more constructive.
JFK said it best…Ask not what you can do for your body. Ask what your body can do for you. Okay maybe that wasn’t a direct quote, but he said something like that.
Make your body learn to swim, or dance the Tango or walk up and over a mountain, or dress it up pretty, or let it rest a little or let it take you to France or at least to Fresno. Make it lift an incredible amount of weight, or run faster than it ever has before, make it float down a river in a raft.
Look at my imperfect body here sitting at the foot of this rock with my family.
It was an incredible place to be and I didn’t need a perfect body to be there. Just do stuff. Celebrate and enjoy what your body IS and can take you to do.
Do ANYTHING but worry about what it’s NOT. Bodies are amazing, enjoy what you’ve got and make the best of it. Give bod a chance to show you how amazing it is without being so hard on it all the time.
First! Amen sis. I don’t worry too much about how my rock hard 40-32-32 bod looks, just how it functions. And I take credit for how well my beautiful wife tammys bod looks cause I give her the easy, no stress life she deserves!
Yes Scott you have the body we all want.
For realsies though, if we were half as concerned about the way our bods functioned we would all be doing a lot more amazing things with them.
Thanks for your comment brother.
Pingback: This Is As Good As It Gets