The other day, I was talking with my dear friend Tania about bodies, and faces, and in this instance, someone’s legs.
‘I mean, they were lovely legs’, I found myself saying, ‘but I know what it most likely takes to have a pair of pins like that and the simple truth is I can’t be bothered’.
As I said those words, I found myself delighted.
I’ve spent a good many years being really not very nice to this body of mine. And because she only wants what’s best for me, she’s done her best to help.
We’ve restricted or been weird about our food and overdone the exercise.
We’ve spent a lot of time trying to control our sometimes out-of-control-world (especially when we were little) by being quite unkind to this glorious, irregular, human shaped skin we move through the world in.
And I tell you, if there’s one thing that kind of behaviour quickly becomes is massively, profusely, spectacularly boring. And because ‘boring’ and ‘flaccid’ are two descriptors I’m morbidly afraid of being attached to my person, I must wholeheartedly commit myself to reject such monstrosities from my life.
I will say that I am very, very cross with The People Wot Have Planted Ridiculous Ideas About Bodies in our heads. This is one hundred trillion percent their fault, and I would very much like to have words.
But today’s post is not about them, because they are annoying. This is a Happiness post, so instead we are going to focus on this:
I can see all of my imperfections, and I am truly growing to love them. I don’t mean this in a saccharine kind of way. I still have to throw out the voices in my head that try to convince me that this body of mine is something to be fixed. What I am grateful for is the felt knowledge she is not.
And I know that instead of reading or talking about jean size and measurements and skin firming creams, I want to talk about art and writing, and that excellent book you read, and how the tree in your garden is starting to change her leaves, and those birds that you see every morning who’ve become so familiar they feel like friends.
And when we see the cake and all the things that looks delicious, we look at each other and say, shall we?!
It’s not that we don’t take care and nourish ourselves and move in the ways we need to. It’s that we don’t fall into the trap of endless improvement of something that is glorious as she is.
Something I’ve learned:
When a body goes into a state of survival, her lungs drop down to wrap around her heart, an embrace of protection. Then, her rib cage forms moves in and around her organs like a shell, a movement towards, not away from, life.
How can you not love a body like that?
Well, we won’t even entertain it.
Today’s #7 Small Happiness is this body.