How do your mind and body get along?

The question came to me rereading Walt Whitman. Whitman was smitten with his body. He dotes on everything it does, often in eyepopping detail. It’s gorgeous, wondrous, the best ever. And so is yours, he assures us – so live it up.

I squirm – bemused, amused, confused. Attitudes towards our fleshly nature vary widely. How come? Why does one person preen in the health club mirror, hyperventilating over the least bulge or twinge, while others seem not to notice their envelope? (The noun envelope suggests my bias.)

I and my body maintain a business-like relation. The success of our mutual enterprise depends on each other, so we’re polite in the corridors, observant of each other’s requirements and whims. If one is out of sorts, both are. But there’s no love lost between us. Each considers the other a bore, whose concerns distract from our mission. My body seeks good feeling, comfort, ease, while my mind argues for eloquence, meaning, intelligence, which demand exertion and keep us indoors. My mind might forget to eat or shower; my body thinks that’s bonkers.

Younger my body was a mischief-maker – not just with the usual pubescent hijinks, but with its all-too-evident inadequacies. I wore a clothes size ycleped “chubby” by one department store long since vanished (and good riddance!). Young for my class, I was late to pubic hair and other developments in those precincts, which sorely grieved me at the time. My biceps seemed not to bulge or voice to drop. No one at home ever touched, except to peck a kiss (on forehead or cheek) or clobber a sibling in fury, so I didn’t know how. Squeamish if hugged, I yearned to be embraced. I had no idea how to broach concupiscence when that grand day dawned, so fumbled foolishly (maybe still do – Jane would never let on).

My body complicated my existence with illness, injury, disease. Childhood asthma worried my parents, midlife cancer and clogged arteries worried me. Now my body’s busying itself with age-appropriate deliquescence en route to decrepitude – a tedious if inevitable conversation topic when coevals convene (our “organ recital”).

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate my body’s exertions on my behalf – and its loyalty, hanging in there when it could have bagged it. Others have worse carnal colleagues. Soon, actuarially, mine will be working overtime – without additional compensation – which says a lot. I just don’t love the old jalopy.

Walt Whitman’s self-delight daunts:

And reams more along these lines. I smile at his exuberance – like an infant’s marveling at his waggling toe – and rue my propriety – why couldn’t I have had more fleshly fun! Why is my amatory self buried so deep beneath my skin!

The optimal relation between mind and body? The same as between person and person: comfortable, tolerant, forgiving. Humans (unlike my canine coadjutor Henry, who finds this discussion risible) must negotiate an entente between our moving parts that’s both sustainable and amenable. Brain and brawn will never see eye to eye. Territorial, they will encroach on each other’s domain. They will insult and outrage each other – but they must live together – in wary harmony, with luck – each secretly aspiring (as in any fond marriage) to be the first to kick.