How do you and your body get along?
A self cannot exist without a body but our body is not our self. As consciousness grows, so does our detachment from our physical facts. We must establish relations with this intimate acquaintance. Some love their bodies; others ignore them; others penalize them for their mind’s mischief. Some applaud, some abhor; some pamper, others pummel. We negotiate with our bodies, make deals, converse, plead, chide. Our bodies seem always to have the upper hand, which is irksome. Where bodies go, selves must follow.
As we age our bodies grow needier. We detect deterioration in every quarter. Hours and fortunes are spent on body-tending. I gulp two dozen pills a day, smear ointments, watch my weight, etc., to impede my inevitable and infuriating decline.
My relations with my body have never been happy. As a kid, sickness hobbled me, then twice as a grown-up threatened my life. I often wished my body would vanish, leaving me the “transparent Eyeball,” Emerson somewhat ghoulishly envisions. My beef with my body was its inferiority to my ideal. My mother bought me clothes from the “Chubby” department of a famous Manhattan store; I still growl at them both, though they’re both long gone. Being young for my class, armpit and pubic hair tarried, of which schoolmates in the locker room took jocular note. I warred with zits, as what adolescent doesn’t. Though I wasn’t bad looking, as old photos attest, I didn’t feel attractive. Sex confused me (naturally enough).
I dress and groom not to be noticed. My wardrobe is meant never to offend, either through ostentation or grunginess. Let me wow with my brain, not my brawn. To this day, I shudder if anyone praises my appearance, even Jane. I’m happier forgetting this flesh exists.
Mirrors nowadays are my especial foes. In the searing American opera Vanessa, the title character swathes the mirrors in her chateau. I get it. My visage, which I must occasionally consult, shocks me. It is the face of a seventy-four-year-old! Not a bad face, as faces go – a bit overweight, though not obese (yet) – still topped with hair – but oh, oh, how far a cry from the man I have in mind! That can’t be me, I gulp. I remember, from my twenties, what I thought of folks in their seventies. Say it aint so!
Bodies and brains age at different rates. Some of my contemporaries got old young, devoting their trumpeted retirements to pleasing ease. I’m the opposite. The fingers typing these paragraphs are a thirty-year-old’s, just coming into his prime, and am I ever in a rush! I can’t see or say sweetly or swiftly enough. I resent my body’s not infrequent calls on my time: damn you, get out of my way!
I maintain my body as I do our car – well enough to carry me – responsibly – but without love. Both eventually will break down, stranding me. I view self-maintenance as Lincoln did government, intending as little as possible and as much as necessary.
Americans obsess over our bodies because we have a) time, b) money, and c) too little else to interest us. Health, diet, clothing supply conversational grist. The meatier topics which consume my curiosity – truth, grace, decency, beauty, morality, etc. – make for torpid talk. Uttered words are helpless wrestling complex subjects. That’s why God made print.
Our relation to our bodies disquiets most of us, I’m guessing, which is why we seldom discuss it, except perhaps with our shrink. I’d rather my body were less of a bother but, hey, it’s gotten me this far.