Human! Human! Human!

Photo by Donald Tran on Unsplash

“Fat is your friend.” OK. Right. Sure. You realize I was brought up in the Western culture, don’t you? Programmed to believe “Fat is NOT my friend?” Programmed up the wazoo to appearance standards that can be suffocating and not in alignment with my own body or values? (And now, we’ve moving into the chow down holiday season! Oy!)

You realize all this, right?

“Fat is your friend.” Leaving a MD appointment wherein my doc shared this little nugget, applying it to people of a certain age. (That would be me.) On one hand, I felt oh-so relieved, but also startled and a bit topsy-turvy. You mean, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, I can now do a behavioral 180 degree and:

*Eat as many chocolate almonds as I want?

*Whenever I want?

*No!!

*Yes!!

*See what I mean about topsy-turvy?

But even the MD permission-giving didn’t put much of a dent in my many years of being culturally brainwashed about appearance (and how this has impacted my sense of worth.) “OMG, I gained 3 pounds!!!” Still feeling quite dizzy with this apparent new reality.

It’s not just our culture’s misbegotten focus on APPEARANCE; it’s a deity at whose feet we often unwillingly worship. Ooowhee, no anger or frustration here.  Nope.

Deep breath......

OK, unloading some resentment. Care to join me? Consider it a party! False idols are an ongoing energy drain and life is complicated enough. (I mean, it’s the holiday season, right? Temptations abound.) However, like many women and men, I’ve been caught in the sticky web of our culture’s appearance sickness. Not only did I fully buy into weight injunctions for myself, but also in my judgments of others. (Can I run and hide after sharing this? Oh, wait, you want to come with me? Sure!)

How many people have I NOT truly seen because their appearance and, therefore, their essence, was blocked by my built-in cultural weight filters? I find myself skittering away from this painful reality, like avoiding the touch of a sore tooth with my tongue. These weighty injunctions are in the air we breathe. All of us.

How to move forward, kindly? Kindly? Yep, that’s would be it. Kind to myself during this season of, shall we say, food abundance; and kindly trying to see, really see others, beyond my good ‘ol cultural wounds of appearance shortsightedness. (OK, so I like challenges.)

Now here’s a thought. Ready? Humanizing. Yep, that’s it - humanizing. Humanizing others. Pretty novel, right?

Hmmm…I usually know when the cultural weight judgment filters descend over my eyes. For the most part, I’ve no idea what it’s like to be in the shoes of another person with their particular life story, their parents, their fill-in-the-blank. But I do know they’re human, as am I. And I DO KNOW just how complicated it is to be human. Hard. Complex. Exciting. Baffling. Can I perceive other people as stories continuing to unfold? Their essence, ability to feel, wisdom, and pain? In spite of my cultural programming, the quality of essence rises to the top in terms of how I wish to see others when my good ‘ol weight filters are threatening to descend. I truly hope my internal essence - yes, my wholeness - becomes primary for those who make the effort to see me.

So there, you false idols of appearance, begone!