Write It

The moment you think to yourself, “No, it’s too painful.  I won’t write it.  I can’t write it!” is the moment you should stop whatever you’re doing and go write it.

Weight Loss and Identity and Possibility

I am ridiculously proud of myself right now.  I managed to lose ten pounds in two months.  That’s about five pounds a month, which is both healthy and manageable.  How did I do it?  Calories.  My net intake goal is 1500 to 1800.  Any more than that, and it’s off to the Wii Fit Plus to run in place for as much as needed to burn off the extra calories.  (And let me just say that not having to exercise is powerful motivation for eating the right number of calories)  The best part is that I have not had to give up any of my favorite foods.  What I’ve done instead is to have the smallest portion size possible, to limit the calorie damage.  This way, I don’t feel completely deprived, and I still have the will power I need to reach my goals.

So, how does any of this relate to identity?  Well, I’m only changing my physical shape.  I am less bulgy and more curvey.  My tummy is leaner and my sides are slimmer.  I have more energy.  I get less sick and I get sick less often.  (All this after only ten pounds!)  The way I see myself has changed.  I have more self-confidence.  I’m happier.

Much of this is at least partially psychological.  I have won a victory in my battle against unhealthy weight and therefore I feel better about everything.  I also have a huge amount of hope that I can continue to lose the rest of the weight I need to lose.  It now seems possible where before I seriously doubted that I would ever be able to get rid of any of this extra flab.

I feel like I am becoming a better person, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the idea of being thin.  I am less grumpy, kinder, more forgiving, and less often depressed.  Most importantly, I like myself more.  It’s not that I never loved myself.  I’ve always loved myself – that’s part of why I wanted to lose the weight in the first place.  I love myself enough to want the best for myself, and that includes my health.  I like myself better now, because I’ve worked through a challenge.  I’ve been courageous and determined.  I’ve persevered, and I haven’t just survived.  I’ve thrived.  I like this version of me a lot better than the me who sat around and moped because she couldn’t lose a single pound.

Weight loss is a battle and a lifestyle.  You can’t relax for a minute, or if you do relax, you have to expect some consequences.  You have to find a system that works for you that you can maintain for months, possibly years.  Even after you lose the weight, it doesn’t end there.  If you let yourself go back to your old habits, you’re going to gain back every single pound, and possibly even a few extras.  You have to adjust your lifestyle so that you maintain your weight.

And the best part is, none of this feels like a burden to me.  The real burden is having the extra weight and not being able to get rid of it.  This whole lifestyle thing with the calorie counting and the exercising – that’s a blessing!  It’s a way out of the burden.  (Yes, the puns were intended.  Burden/weight; get it?  Sorry.)

The final bit of philosophical awesome that comes out of this losing ten pounds thing is that if I can change myself like this, and do something that for a while I honestly thought was truly impossible, how many other things are there in my life and in myself that I can also change?  It may be true that some things are impossible, but we can’t know that for sure until we try to change them.  If don’t admit that something is impossible and if we continue to try to make it possible, we might just succeed.  It’s when we admit that something is impossible and stop trying to change it that it really becomes impossible.  Even then, it doesn’t have to stay impossible.  If we decide to change it and make it possible, then maybe it will become possible after all.

You Were Wild Once

A friend of mine has a bumper sticker on her car that says “You were wild once…Don’t let them tame you.”  I’ve always liked that quote and wanted to find out more about who said it and what the context of it was, so I did a little bit of google-powered investigating and discovered something that amazed and inspired me.

This quote was said by famous dancer, Isadora Duncan, who invented the technique and art form that later became known as Modern Dance.  Before Isadora Duncan, dance was rigid, stiff, and not considered a purely artistic expression.  After Isadora Duncan, everything changed.

When I think of dance today, I think of so many different kinds from so many different places in the world.  I also think of artistic expression where the human body is both canvas and medium.  I cannot imagine a world where all dance was restricted to predetermined movements.

To me, Isadora Duncan is an example of the kind of impact a single person can have not only on those who work with her daily but also on the entire world.  Our worldwide culture is forever changed because of Isadora Duncan’s dance philosophy.  We will never be the same again, and it’s because she infected the world with her ideas.

And then I come back to this quote, “You were wild once….Don’t let them tame you.”  We are wild when we are children.  We run across the grass, play in the mud, tear holes in our clothes, forget to put our shoes on before we go outside.  We don’t think in terms of what the right answer must look like or that a certain answer has to be wrong.  The world is what the world is and everything is possible.  As we grow into adults, we are trained to believe that the world functions in a specific way, that certain answers can only be right if they look a certain way, and that some answers will always be wrong no matter what they look like.  We stop running through the grass and playing in the mud.  We never forget our shoes before we go outside, and if we ever tear holes in our clothes it suddenly seems like the world will end.  In short, we let “them” tame us.

And why should we?  What if we didn’t wear the same pair of shoes two days in a row?  What if we let the right answer be the right answer no matter what it looked like?  What if, when we find a wrong answer, we don’t just let it die, but instead we find the question that makes it a right answer?

Of course, there is nothing wrong with wearing shoes outside or looking for right answers or knowing when an answer is not the one you’re looking for, but there’s no reason we can’t still be wild about it.

You Know You’re A Classicist When…

So I was driving around on my way to a writing group and saw an appartment building shaped like a triumphal arch. I turned around and drove past it a second time just to make sure I had seen what I’d thought I had seen and also drove past another building in the same appartment complex that looked like the coliseum.

I almost had to pull over and check my gps if only to verify that I was still in the 21st century.

Anyway, I came away from the experience a happier classicist.