Lent
Week 4: What it means to be in the body
Somehow many of us forget that the body at the age of 5 or 15 or 25 is not so different from the body of the 75 year old person. We are all of delicate skin and flesh and bone. The older person has wear and tear, has ailments and aches that a younger person does not have, but we are all prone to death and disease, to the same fate. This is not to say we should not take care of our bodies, but it is to not see them as indestructible things.
Working out on Saturday sometimes gives me the same soreness as the yoga class on Wednesday. It’s just that my experience of each in my mind is quite different, but they both require the same effort, strength, and ability. My tender muscles might recover slower at 55 compared to 25, but they are not steel. They are organic and tender just the same. In many ways, as I stretch out at my current age and learn to balance on one foot, I am more flexible than I was when I was younger. I’ve learned more. I’ve challenged myself and pushed the boundaries of what I thought I could do.
It is always that, to be enfleshed beings. We often do not know the extent of what we can do, can achieve, can accomplish within our own skin. But it is too often the image that we have of ourselves in our heads that draws the lines. It is like the rope around the baby elephant’s foot that, when large, the elephant sees the small rope in the same way, despite its massive size. That is to say, the person I think I am is never really me. Because if I ask you if you were the same at age 5 as you are now, you would tell me that you were not. But you would have no qualms saying that 5 year old was you also.
And this is perhaps the same way we see the world and God and everything, through the perspective of this lens that is our bodies. These experiences, these hopes and dreams. As a child I dreamt I could be anything, and as I got older those dreams fell away, but now older still, I’m coming back to those dreams again and saying why not. This is because as I age, I see how much more precious this existence is in this skin, with these bones, in this flesh, that I want to squeeze as much meaning from the marrow. Even in the risk of having those dreams dashed, the cost of not is too great, and the finality of life is the same.
A friend’s wife is dying, and his heartbreak becomes a eulogy, meaning, and poetry. My friend who is younger than me has recent heart problems despite being a runner and frequent gym user. My father barely got up the stairs the other day at 92 years old. My cat sleeping next to me is 19 years old. And we all have the same chance in life, the same fragile existence, whether we are thankful and take it as it is, or not.
