I want to look really good in a red track suit while doing the robot. That's the healthy I'd like to be. Smooth-movin', form-fittin', disco-livin' healthy.
I'm a 22 year-old who is acutely aware of her mortality. In fact, I have a long-standing joke that some random universal event--a flying space toilet--may end this life of mine after 25 years.
May 2, 2010. Kaput!
Living fully is easier to do when you are counting the days. I'm petrified that the toilet may meet my crown a month--week--day early. Too early. I believe that I'm prepared for death insofar I have done everything that I need to do. Not everything in the world, not every opportunity, not even a lot of things, but everything that I feel necessary in this lifetime. In actuality, this moment is not a fixed date; it will be a feeling, very much like receiving a letter in the mail. If I am attending a million-person rally, operating a flying car, or exploring the Arctic's remains, and I know I'm finished, I plan to lie down into permanent sleep.
Health is on my mind. Today: doctor's visit to check an abnormally-grown mole on my leg, update a prescription for past acne, and take a horomone blood-test; 11-minute mile on treadmill, upper-lower-oblique ab exercises, 12 miles on bike; conversation with personal trainer who approached me on the bike that ended with a 8am consultation tomorrow; budgeting for my May dental work and chakra reading; hair appointment made for next week; and of course, a french manicure.
I got wise after graduation. I decided to really love myself, which meant paying close attention to how my body feels, what I put into it, how I challenge it, and how to care for it. Same for my mind and spirit. I do this in-spite of the doctor's expression when I asked her specific health-related questions, as if I wanted her first-born before she crossed the room. Probably wouldn't been comparable in health-care costs...
While driving from the doctor's office to my gym, I heard a clip on the radio about a former NPR Morning Edition commentator who is recovering from spinal cancer. He had surgery to remove it, only to suffer a stroke and ascertain a Staph infection, another surgery, and have the cancer return for yet another surgery. After previous (failed) cancer-treating treatments, three spinal surgeries, stroke and an infection, his daily life changed. (Before he was able to maintain about his same routine as in his pre-cancer life.) I recall when my life has changed after being sick. Like how initially developing asthma in college changed all activity in my life. It was terrorizing once being a world-class athlete to being barely able to walk across campus.
Health is one of those qualities in which it is much harder to appreciate it while it is good. Still possible, though. I'm challenging myself to run a 9 minute mile one day. I want to attend a sangha retreat within the year. I will discipline myself to be a high-achieving law student.
Health matters. I want to graduate from the robot to break-dancing, eventually.
See ya,
R.
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2 comments:
Ah yes... the moments since I left your apartment seem like a bittersweet eternity in which I have learned to spread my own wings (nrrrh, not very far, obviously.) LOL. But yes... health is important. (Sorry, that's the most profound thing I could think of after stuffing myself with 'fruit bars' which, by the way, have little--if any--real fruit actually in them.) But yes... where was I... ah yes. Health. Have you put much credence into yoga as a means of uniting your physical, mental, and spiritual existences? Could be your next venture/stress relief in law school.
If you're interested in holistic/ Buddhism type things, you should check this place out. A friend of a friend worked there a year or so ago:
http://www.eomega.org/
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