Earn Your Body

I’m not going to lie. And it’s all stuff I’ve said before, but I’m over­weight. I’m fat. This post is going to be a string of con­scious­ness post laden with pop cul­ture ref­er­ences and quotes. Buckle up.

Go home, take a paper bag, cut some eye­holes out of it. Put it over your head, get undressed and look at your­self in the mir­ror. Really eval­u­ate where your strengths and weak­nesses are. And be hon­est. — Joan on Mad Men

The sen­ti­ment here is clear, you have to be objec­tive. If you look at your­self, you see you, but when we look at oth­ers — peo­ple we don’t know, we judge them. We judge them based on how they look. The bag on our head, even the metaphor­i­cal bag, enhances your abil­ity to dis­as­so­ci­ate your­self with your body and look at your flaws, and your strengths.

The key to my exer­cise pro­gram is this one sim­ple truth: I hate my body. You under­stand that the sec­ond you look in the mir­ror and you’re happy with what you see, baby, you just lost the bat­tle. — Perry Cox on Scrubs

Change only hap­pens when we have become so dis­sat­is­fied with the cur­rent state of things that we must change. I left the com­edy club due to a sin­gle staff mem­ber who made my work­ing there unbear­able. And thanks to him I dou­bled my salary, then dou­bled it again the next year. All because I worked with a class-A rag­ing ass­hole. Now, I must find that equiv­a­lent in my body and use it as lever­age to cause change.

Here is the thing though, you can­not take a leap of faith with­out know­ing where you’re aim­ing to land. Oth­er­wise you end up being one of the char­ac­ters in Super Smash Broth­ers where you fall to your death, fall for­ever and never reach your goal.

A goal is akin to a dream. Sep­a­rated by a thin veil. Dreams require we admit to what they are, and risk to our­selves that we may not real­ize this dream. Like ask­ing a woman out on a date, chas­ing a dream exposes our­selves to danger.

I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
– W. B. Yeats

I first heard this in the movie Equi­lib­rium, and then I looked up the poem. Pow­er­ful stuff. It finds another risk in admit­ting our dreams, that oth­ers will crush them. Chil­dren dream of Santa, and it falls to par­ents to one day tread on that dream to edu­cate them about the world. If my dream is to have six pack abs and a body of a god, then there are hun­dreds of peo­ple who will tell me it’s impos­si­ble, I’d never get there. And here is where my resolve, deter­mi­na­tion and bull­head­ed­ness come in. To them I say: Fuck off. It’s my damn dream so get off my cloud! This post is what hap­pens when I stay up late watch­ing Fight Club and cod­ing PHP.

Earn your body.

I do not know where I heard this quote, I apol­o­gize to who­ever said it and came up with this great truth. In so many ways I’ve spent my life tak­ing the “free demo” of my body. Even dur­ing high school sports I strug­gled to push myself and earn it. For a short while after col­lege I was earn­ing my body. Daily work­outs. Eat­ing well. And I was earn­ing it, see­ing the pounds slip off. Then I didn’t fall of the wagon, the wagon exploded around me and my body slid back­wards to the worst shape of my life. Here is a sim­ple truth: Your body wants to be fat. Fat = sus­te­nance and in famine it means you can live longer. But unfor­tu­nately for your body, your goal is not to sur­vive famine, it is to sur­vive time. And sci­ence shows that time is con­quered by not accu­mu­lat­ing that fat. And so it’s time I begin earn­ing my body again.

This is your life and it’s end­ing one minute at a time. — Nar­ra­tor, Fight Club

The time is now. Not tomor­row. Not next week. I need to start earn­ing my body. Tonight. Aside from the desire to look appeal­ing, it has become more and more appar­ent that my future requires I make these changes. Both of my par­ents have fought dis­ease, my dad is a can­cer sur­vivor and my mom died from her dis­ease (for­give me for not going into more detail, I don’t need to delve deeper than I already am.) My fam­ily has his­tory of heart dis­ease, dia­betes, alco­holism, and more. A clear sign that I should get mov­ing and stop wast­ing time. So what stops me? Fear.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total oblit­er­a­tion.
I will face my fear.
I will per­mit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be noth­ing.
Only I will remain.

Fuck fear. Sim­ply. I’m able to do this if I become ded­i­cated and stop cheating.

I’m going to earn my body.