You Are More Than Your Body

I grew up in a weight obsessed culture. Most of us did. It is still there. It seems that, for my entire life, being thin was the most important goal in life. It was the message I got, whether overt or covert. And that message is still out there. There's no denying it.

But lately I have heard from all sorts of fronts that "strong is the new skinny." In some ways that sounds great. People can attain strong much easier than they can attain skinny. Strong seems less flashy (sometimes). Less vain. Strong comes in handy for pretty much anybody. It performs a valuable function in health and self defense and moving appliances, which I do with an alarming frequency.

But even strong can fail you. Health conditions can creep in. Accidents can change your life in a split second. And if your identity has become that you are strong, you are setting yourself up for more pain because one day you will be weak.

When will we learn that we are not just our bodies? That we are more than our bodies?

A while back I listened to a TED Talk by Janine Shepherd. Janine was an Australian cross country skier who was set to compete in the Olympics when she was hit by a truck while on a bike training ride. She talks about her time in the hospital while she was in traction, not knowing if she would ever walk again, in a ward with others in the same boat. She talks about the relationships that were formed there. These people had all been stripped of everything other than who they were on the inside and yet they connected via conversation without the ability to move or even see one another. They connected at a heart level.

She reminds us that we are more than our bodies. That a broken body isn't a broken person. The heart of the person remains and that is who we are. Our thoughts, our experiences, our fears, our longings, our beliefs, our ideas. These are all still there on the inside, broken body or not.

I think it is important to remember that as we try to turn the tide away from an unhealthy pursuit of thinness that we don't just turn it into an unhealthy pursuit of strength or fitness or health.

Because we can lose all that in an instant.

Because we are more than all that in the first place.

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