Body is a friend

The body is a friend. Feed it right and train it, and it makes joy on its own — from movement, from sex, from solving things, from being useful. That’s its normal work.

The trouble starts when it gets hooked. Lie down next to a sugar box or an IV drip of heroin, and the body’s happy, no thinking required. But once it depends on something, it starts to push. It wants the sweet. It wants the cigarette. And the strangest part — you start to think it’s you who wants the donut. The body runs the mind and makes it find reasons.

It’s like a dog that was supposed to guard you and grew into a wolf that won’t let you out of the house. Peterson’s dragon nobody noticed. Don’t make yourself its prisoner.

So keep it in hand. The way you drive a car — there’s a point where you can trust “yourself,” the part that handles it on its own, and you’re free to be elsewhere. The boots know the road. A body you’ve trained becomes that: a friend who carries you.

You may not want to hear this, but it’s true: the state of your body is at least partly your responsibility. That means it’s within your control — and that should be freeing, because you can take it wherever you want it to go.

Same goes for your looks. You can’t fully control them, but you have more influence than you might think. And you may find it feels really good to invest in yourself.

And it comes off cleanest under water. On a breath-hold the masks drop, the doubting mind goes quiet, and what’s left is what was always there — the part that doesn’t depend on the next inhale.