Drill-Down: Body Image
Touched on in the Philosophy essay, but not much really… I think body image is also something I intend to resolve through the new philosophy.
There is one school of thought that is favored by a lot of new agers and such, which is that we put too much emphasis on the body, when in fact it is just a shell that contains our true essence, etc.
And, yeah, sure I’m all for that on some level. I try to rise above vanity and judgment when meeting people, sometimes with more success than other times. And I do not think you can just look at someone and dismiss them for superficial reasons.
Tim Miller teaches an acting workshop where participants are naked and they spend the weekend using their bodies and its scars, tattoos, birth marks or anything else as a jumping off point for narrative. I’ve never taken this course, but remember Tim saying something like your body is the roadmap you take through life. It marks all of your journeys.
And, I believe that. But, with that logic, I think being overweight shows that you found the wrong path at some point. Whether it be masking emotions with food, using it as a cause to not live fearlessly, or anything else, when you find yourself in an overweight body, it is an indicator that you fell off a spiritual path. (Make your own comic reference here to the number of overweight priests.)
I think there is a pure connection between spirit and body, the goal making the two work as one. To bring up the acting books I’ve been reading lately, there is a common thread about the actor keeping his body ready to perform whatever role might be required of him. Part of that is knowing how to project your voice, warming up your voice, stretching before a performance, having taken singing, dancing or whatever lessons will possibly be needed, all so that when you are called to do a role, your focus can be on how to fully embrace and flesh out that role, and having a body that is ready to serve you in that pursuit.
That is how I now see life. And having a body that isn’t fit and limber and healthy means I know I am both unprepared for challenges life may present to me, but also that I have not been living spiritually up until that point, because there is something unnatural about overconsumption. And even if those are urges sating an emotional distress, it just means there is a disconnect spiritually somewhere. There exists somewhere a root cause as to why something makes you anxious which makes you nervous which makes you eat so that you’re no longer nervous, etc., or whatever it might be.
Unlike the person who looks good but lives corruptly, able to keep his true nature locked away like a Dorian Gray portrait, someone overweight walks around with their issues personified on a daily basis. In asmuchas my veganism is about treading as lightly as I can without harming anything, overconsumption of healthy vegan food (and even when I binge, I tend to binge on low-fat vegan stuff) is still abusing the amount of resources you use, and continuing patterns rather than trying to resolve them.
The question I have is always: is avoiding the problem as good as solving it?
For example, the time I am most likely to overeat food is when I accept a contract writing job for a company that I do not want to do. And, what will happen is, I will do ANYTHING available to me that isn’t working on their contract. It could be hours. And one of the things I often have is prepared food sitting ready to eat in the refrigerator. So, it is something that can delay me having to work on the work I don’t want to do, so I eat. It isn’t even enjoyable. It is merely consumption without reason or question.
However, if I find a place where I am happy and excited and blissful, I don’t overeat. It never comes up. I’m actually about to pursue a path along these lines and see if it pans out money-wise, but there is part of me that worries whether I am avoiding an issue instead of resolving it. Is that the same as people who get sober without a program, who still bear some of the psychological cues of their troubles. The dry drunks who still lie a lot, just because they don’t know how to not lie regularly?
Or, is the actual problem not defined properly. If the issue is that I take work that I feel is antispiritual, anticreative, morally vapid, and something that makes me feel impure… maybe that *IS* the problem, and my reaction to it is for me to avoid such things. Does my mind know that making someone with body images overeat is as big a message as it can send to get me to change course? Keep doing work like this, or I’ll make you fat, which do you rather?
I have two contract jobs right now, both should end before Halloween. I’m thinking that I will try and pull the plug for a bit after that. If the new venture pays off financially, then I’ll be safe and can stay away. If it doesn’t, I’m not as sure. But I’m certainly, certainly inspired by how gung-ho I am about the new project.
I spent like 5-6 hours on it tonight, with every idea causing a few more, and instead of it becoming a massive to-do list, I’m firing off e-mails making it all happen in real time.
So, I think trying to change my body was putting the cart before the horse. My body reflects my life, and my life is conflicted. It might be time for one last corporate colonic to try and live purely for a bit.
When I look at my body these days, I question the state of my spirit, not the size of my dinner.
Once I am centered, and happy, and blissed, my body will shrink. I have absolutely no question.
