I read this piece this morning, and I’ve been pondering it ever since: “Your body is not your masterpiece — your life is. It is suggested to us a million times a day that our BODIES are PROJECTS. They aren’t. Our lives are. Our spirituality is. Our relationships are. Our work is. Stop spending all day obsessing, cursing, perfecting your body like it’s all you’ve got to offer the world.”
It’s such a counterintuitive headline to me, working with embodiment both in my own personal journey and supporting others. But still, my brain and my gut and my heart went YES YES YES while reading this piece. Not because I don’t believe that my body, too, is a masterpiece, and is an instrument that I want to fine-tune and hone and study and appreciate, but because ultimately, the message of the piece is to appreciate this amazing tool that I (we all) have, and stop obsessing over my body and it’s lack or abundance or style or whatever, and get on to the creating anyway.
I love the idea of my life, my spirituality, my relationships, and my work being projects that I am working on, my masterpieces. I’m not sure if I agree that my body can’t also be part of that masterpiece. I think some of the healing of this obsession over the masterpiece of the body can happen, and we can perhaps accept the innate masterpiece-ness of the body.
Well anyway, here’s the whole piece: Your Body Is Not Your Masterpiece, by Glennon Doyle Melton. I’d love to hear what you think about it.
— Zed
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