Recently I’ve been on a bit of a health kick. I’d allowed my weight to balloon up to 50 pounds over what my body frame can healthily carry. My blood sugar was nearing diabetes level, and I found myself tired all the time. So far I’ve lost 22 pounds, and I hope to drop 10 more by the end of the year. And, sure enough, I feel better, my brain is snapping again, I can skip up the stairs without huffing and puffing, and I’m happier.
Eating less, eating better and getting aerobic exercise is the great secret to a healthy body. But I had let myself fall into the corporation diet of chips, sugar beverages, processed fast foods, alongside a commitment to sitting on my butt rather than stimulating my heart and lung muscles. I had allowed myself to be enslaved by corporate-created desires of consumptive mindlessness. I was living as if I didn’t have a body, just a formless mini-me that kept shoving crappy food objects down one hole only to have it come out another. It was like I was living in some kind of trance, fully obedient to a voice not my own.
Since awakening I’ve been wondering why I let my body become disfigured and rather dysfunctional. Granted, 10 pounds overweight is no big deal, but 50 pounds creates lifestyle change. Think about it: Try walking around with 50 pounds in a backpack one day. It won’t take you too long to get tired. And that’s what was happening to me. I was getting tired on the job, tired in my friendships, too tired to think, too tired to study, too tired to be creative or imaginative, too tired in my marriage, too tired for God and too tired to do politics. When our bodies break down and tire, who benefits? I’ve begun to think that weight gain — an epidemic in our country especially among children — is a form of obedience that saps us of the energy needed for a spiritual life of political freedom.
If we are obedient, we do not resist the continual repetition of horror that has become the American way of life. Pick your poison: climate change, droughts that will lead to higher food prices and famine, resource wars in the Middle East, an ongoing military crusade against all things not capitalism, increasing police-state tactics across America, the ongoing economic pillage of the filthy rich, the targeting of liberals as the enemy, the new blowback against women and minorities, an upcoming election between fascism light and fascism heavy. Yep, that alone will do it. Who wouldn’t want to get numb?
But as I started pounding the treadmill and getting feeling back into my body, I began to see that our bodies must become tools of resistance. There’s a big storm coming, and we need to get in shape to survive it.