Saturday, July 04, 2009
a smile reminder
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
lovebodybodylove
I’ve been thinking recently about what it means to be thankful for what you have and are. It started last week when I had to have an abscess removed (a minor operation really, but one that required anesthesia and an over night stay in the hospital). Since I was lucky enough to be an AUC student with health insurance I was treated as a special case in the hospital (there is a woman designated to deal solely with foreign students who come into the hospital). My room was more like a hotel room, overlooking the Nile, a single, at the end of the corridor, quiet and secluded. While lying in bed I contemplated what this experience might have been like had it been a month earlier, when I didn’t have health insurance, nor was I an AUC student officially. Where would I have gone? What would have happened differently? How much more pain might I have suffered, both physically and in my pocket is well? Sometimes the things I’m granted here as a white American foreigner come to stand only for the injustices that are done to others (that not what I get is wrong, but what others don’t get is…)
Nevertheless, politics and world order are never my hot topics to debate about, so let me return to my point. Lying in my bed, watching the Nile pass slowly as I dazed in and out of sleep I could only be thankful that I was safe, that I was out of pain (with the exception of my iv… which after a week still has left a date sized bruise on my arm), that I was breathing, that I was there.
As this past week has gone by, my small wound continues to go through the process of healing, yet another phenomenon that I’m awed by every time I get to be in the presence of it. Today was actually the first time I got a chance to see the wound with a good look (it’s not in the easiest place to spot…). I little hole on the verge of closing. It had a personality to me, like a little baby that was humming softly in the sleep of a fading fever. And as I peeked back all I could think was, ‘thank you’. Of course this was at first a reactive response to knowing that the painful little sucker that was there before was now gone. With a second of thought though I remembered that this body I have goes through amazing things. It develops, changes, breaks down and rebuilds. It was like a moment of awe and recognition for something so amazing that I have. The pink flesh still waiting to regroup under the beige skin hovering over it seemed like the underworld of my life that I never take time to remember.
On the way to the bus, this phrase ‘thank you’ kept rolling over in my mind. Of course, as someone still search-learn-ask-grow-ing and confused… I asked who/what am I to thank for this exactly? The obvious and easy answer is God. But of course, since I don’t like easy answers, and my knee jerk reaction is to always dismiss the word “God” as a cliché more than anything else, I asked myself another question…. Does it really matter who or what I’m thanking as long as I’m thankful? It’s automatically built into the phrase “thank you” to direct thanks to some one –you. I could say ‘thanks’ I guess… seems to informal though right??? Either way it seems that “thanks” -as a concept- is always a response to gaining from something, rather than an expression for appreciation and love for what one has/is.
So instead of going back over the never-ending argument in my mind about “God” and who I should thank…I simply decided to thank my body, and appreciate it. Sitting in the luxury of an air-conditioned bus I went over my entire body in my mind ---toes, hairs, freckles, skin, flesh, bones, muscles, fat, organs, thoughts, feelings and gave them all a kiss and told them thanks. I thought about the wrinkles on my forehead that have appeared and grown deeper in the past year and thanked them for reminding me of everyday that I’ve lived--- if anything they are the ones that have seen everything that I’ve overlooked, that reflect my growth, my neglect (for sleep and sunblock…), that reflect me.
I love loving my body. Yet often times I feign this love by simply saying that working out or not eating something ‘bad’ is a way for me to really show that I love my body. True we must treat our bodies with respect, and it’s true also that those nagging decisions we make to ‘protect and keep’ our bodies are what allow us to live and love them even more. Today though, I focused on the love part rather than the action. I loved my body for 10 straight minutes on that bus in a way that I had not realized I had the power to do before…. and for some reason it felt deeper and stronger than any run I’d been on …
with the exception of a few…J
I guess it’s just all to say thank you wound… you’re a love saver.