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Beliefs about my body

The latest from xkcd is particularly awesome:

lego

I am an organ donor. When i die, i want my body donated. Take what other people can use from it, and then send it on to science, where it can be used to teach medical students or further some understanding of whatever’s applicable.

My grandfather died when i was 2; he had lymphatic cancer, and when he died, he donated his body to science in the hopes of furthering understanding of cancer and such. When my grandma died three years ago (of nothing other than old age – she was 93), we did the same thing. I was not able to be there when she was dying, but i was able to get into town the next day. My dad and i went to the hospital to take care of whatever paperwork needed to be done; when they asked if we wanted to see the body, neither my dad nor i had any interest. Partly because we didn’t want that to be our last memory of her (my dad was also out of town when she died), but also: she wasn’t in there anymore. It was just the shell that, at one point, happened to house one of our favorite souls on the planet.

We told them that, as per her wishes, we wanted her body donated to science. I was more than a little dismayed to find out that this was such a rare request that they had to actually make an hour’s worth of phone calls to find out what all was involved in the process.

I view my body as the temporary housing of my soul. I like to decorate it with piercings and tattoos, because really: who moves into a house and doesn’t decorate? And yet, i have little to no interest in fashion; ironic, perhaps, but that’s another post. My piercings are mostly decorative, but my tattoos are milestone markers – they all tell stories of events and realizations that had a profound impact on my life, on who i am as a person. But again, those stories are a bit of a tangent, so i’ll leave them for a later post.

I do and do not have any huge attachment to my body. Obviously, it’s the only one i have right now, and as such i want to treat it well and keep it in decent working order. I want it to last as long as it can. But here’s where i slightly disagree with the comic i posted above: i don’t subscribe to the belief that when we die, that’s just it. I believe that when i die, my soul will move on to pastures anew – could be another body, could be another level of existence. I dunno. I don’t know if i believe in Heaven/Hell/Valhalla/Nirvana or whatever. I know this much: i can’t prove they don’t exist (given that you can’t prove a negative), but whatever it is that lies beyond, i’m not quite ready to find out for certain. ;)

In a lot of ways, i see my own body as irrelevant. It’s where i live, and so that makes it relevant to this life, to my current life. But it’s not the end-all-be-all, and it’s not the center of the universe; it doesn’t even have to be the center of anyone else’s life. If someone else doesn’t like it? That’s their problem, not mine. If i don’t like it, that’s my problem – not anyone else’s.

Here’s the thing: in the grand scheme of things, i am a speck, standing on a speck of a planet, which is warmed by a star that is a but mere speck in the universe.

Some people (myself included) think of this and see it as awe-inspiring – they marvel at the vast expansiveness of the universe, at the possibilities that such an unimaginably large thing can barely contain. Others see this as a diminishment, as an indicator of their “insignificance”. I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson said it best in his cosmic sermon (which is definitely worth checking out). As he mentions in this speech, he had been contacted by a psychologist who studied the effects of things that made people feel insignificant, and wanted to do a survey with the people who saw one of DeGrasse Tyson’s shows (which involved a ginormous zoom-out from a person to the universe). His response?

“There’s something wrong here. Why does he feel small, but when i look up at the universe, i feel large? Then i realize, the problem is: his ego is too large to begin with. He came to the problem thinking too highly of who and what he was to begin with. Because then, everything that happened in the show destabilized his self-image. Whereas, i know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomenon in the cosmos. And it’s our 15 pounds of gray matter that figured this out!”

Parts of this amazing speech are captured beautifully in this video, Symphony of Science:

Do yourself a favor: don’t just scroll past that video. Watch it. Then watch it again. DO EET NAO. For several weeks now, i’ve been trying to resist the temptation to just post the video and the lyrics and shout BECOME ONE WITH THIS KNOWLEDGE!

And yes, if you watch both the (above-linked) sermon and the music video, you’ll notice that they chopped up DeGrasse Tyson’s speech to make it say something only slightly different:

I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??

It gives me chills just thinking about it. Here’s another awesome quote from Carl Sagan in that video:

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We’re made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

It makes my throat lumpy to be faced with such beauty, with such an affirmation of the beauty of being made of star stuff. And sure, some of this may sound a bit new-agey, but like DeGrasse Tyson, i’m not going to apologize for the findings of astrophysicists.

An iron meteor created the Barringer Meteorite Crater in Arizona (which is 4,180 feet across and 570 feet deep) some 50,000 years ago. The iron in my blood comes from the same source as the iron in that meteor. In the light of such amazing stuff, i find it mind-boggling that anyone can have the audacity to think things like the size, shape and/or color are valid reasons for discriminating against another human being. Again, i quote Neil DeGrasse Tyson:

We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically

We are all connected. Our own individual atoms are all put together differently, and yet we ultimately have the same origins.

November 6th, 2009 | Category: Body bits, Brain bits | One comment

*clears throat*

I am always clearing my throat. Damn near constantly. Ever since i was a teenager, i’ve had a chronic itch/tickle in the back of my throat. If i don’t clear my throat, my voice breaks and sometimes just doesn’t work. Clear throat, voice comes back. Very simple. I suspect it’s an allergy thing or a post nasal drip thing, or just another Lindsay’s body is just wonky thing.

I haven’t given it much thought, not in a long time. But a while back, someone said to me, “you should get some lozenges, so your throat doesn’t get raw.” That confused me: why would i need lozenges? Oh yeah, the clearing my throat thing that i do all the time. I explained that it wasn’t a cold or a nervous habit, just that if i didn’t do it, i’d lose my voice.

Since then, i’ve been relatively self-conscious about it. More aware of it. More trying to not do it. More apologizing to the people around me for it – even to my husband, who i’m sure is well used to it after 8 years together.

I can definitely understand how my throat-clearing might be seen as annoying to those around me. But feeling guilty about it won’t make it go away, won’t change anything. It’s something about me that i’ve not yet figured out how to change, if that change is even necessary. While it may be annoying to some, it’s not actively causing harm to anyone. Sound familiar?

This is and is not an analogy; i really do have to clear my throat more than a dozen times a day (it’s generally worst in the morning). We all have our oddities, our idiosyncrasies. And we sometimes get distorted notions about how much these things impact the people around us. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. The ones that do, we might need to look at more closely. The ones that don’t, we need to recognize that they don’t, and move on.

October 21st, 2009 | Category: Body bits | Leave a comment

Keep your politics off of my leg lawn!

A few weeks ago, i was hanging out on Stickam when a bizarre conversation came up: the topic of women shaving their legs. Very out of context for the room in i was in at the time, but i decided to add my own $0.02 anyway. I said that i didn’t shave my legs because 1) i don’t really care, and 2) my hair is so thin and fine, you can’t really see it from a distance (even when i haven’t shaved for a few months).

I got a few “ewwwww” type comments, but someone actively called me out on it. This particular gent told me it wasn’t acceptable – not because i don’t care, but because if i didn’t shave, it needed to be in defiance of the societal expectation that women SHOULD shave. He then tried to lecture me about body image conforming; i LOLed at him, and multiple people were telling him, “uh, dude, you have no idea who you’re talking to; she doesn’t need to hear this.”

(For context on that: some of the folks there are aware that i’ve been involved with fat/size/body acceptance bits, and most folks there knew me mostly as Ben’s Wife. Ben is known there as a smart fellow who isn’t likely to marry an idiot.)

I mostly laughed it off and exchanged private messages with a friend of mine who, like myself, simply could not believe this conversation was happening. Eventually he got the idea that he needed to hushface and actually did so.

But this situation kind of stuck in my craw. I was being pressured into having a Big Reason for what i was already doing (or not doing, rather). Because i am a contrary beasty, my inclination was to grab a razor and shave my legs on camera… or just to shave my legs at all, because now there was someone who tried to me why i shouldn’t. That wore off after a day or two, and i went back to not caring. And i don’t mean that every time i take a shower, i repeat a mantra of “i will not shave my legs because i don’t care!” I honestly don’t have much of an opinion either way. Sometimes i shave just because i’m bored. Sometimes i think about it and don’t do it because my back is bothering me and i don’t want to tempt fate.

If there’s one thing i’ve learned from my experience in the Fatosphere, it’s that my brain does not like the politicization of my body. I was thinking about this the other day while i was waiting for a bus (and had no pen & paper, so i may not be able to reconstruct the thoughts as i had them then, but rest assured that they were awesome).

Forcing myself to think of my body as a political tool felt like another form of degradation: it takes that much more control away from me. There was pressure to feel a certain way about myself, and while the reasons themselves weren’t necessarily Not Valid, it’s my body, and my relationship with it is no one else’s business. Just as much as your relationship with your body is none of my business.

Someone telling me i need to feel a certain way about my body in order to conform to their agenda or serve their purposes… sound familiar? I don’t let the media tell me how to feel about my fat, why should i let some bloke on the internet tell me how i should feel about my leg hair (or why i should feel a certain way about it)?

This is more than “you can’t tell me what to do!” This is my recognizing that i did myself more harm than good when i was in the Fatosphere by trying to make my body a political thing. If someone else finds it empowering to think of their body in that way? Good for them! I totally mean that. It just doesn’t do me any favors.

Do i want people to have a good relationship with their own bodies? Hell yes with a cherry on top. But i need to have a good relationship with my own body, and for me, that means not thinking of my body in political terms.

The relationship that Ben and i have is unique to us; if i tried to tell my friends how they should handle their marriages, it’s socially acceptable for them to tell me to mind my own damn business. In my ideal world, it would be socially acceptable for everyone to have that same response whenever someone told them how they should handle their relationships with their own bodies.

July 10th, 2009 | Category: Body bits | Leave a comment