Disembodied
For the last two weeks I’ve been at what I’ll jokingly refer to as “fat camp.” Though it’s probably not funny, humor is a mechanism we chubby girls have for self-protection. We want to laugh before somebody else does. Besides, it’s better to laugh than cry.
When I started Epic Change just a couple years ago I was about 100 pounds lighter than I am now. Of course, I won’t exactly get on the scale, or even let the fitness staff tell me what they saw when they weighed me, my back turned to hide from the damage – so who knows for sure what the numbers are? But they’re probably irrelevant, really.
As I was moving, walking through the snow, breathing ice-cold air, stretching too-tight muscles, dancing, feeling my body’s gravity on the earth as I lay flat to rest, it struck me. Somehow I’d forgotten my body was even there.
It probably sounds strange, but somewhere along the line I divorced my mind and soul from its shell. I decided my physical body was irrelevant, a sack for what really mattered – the ideas, love, passion and intelligence within. And, as I did, my physical body has grown larger and larger as if to visibly remind me of it’s existence, which I have faithfully ignored. Because I’m a smart girl. It’s my brain that matters. And the love in my heart. It’s what’s inside that counts.
But, as I laid in meditation for the first time in years, I remembered what a gift it is to be incarnate. To be able to hold babies, hug physical friends, really taste good food – to dance and sing, to smell wood fires burning and feel snow on my skin. To have this human experience. To be in this body.
I’ve also been reading a dense little manifesto called You Are Not A Gadget and I wonder the degree to which my physical self, my humanity, has been sacrificed to my online presence. And the degree to which we as nonprofits sacrifice the humanity of the communities we serve through our use of technology.
How do we retain our humanity while spending ever more time in an increasingly digital world?
PS: Thanks @NurtureGirl for the nudge. More blog posts to come ;)
Posted: February 11th, 2010 under The Foundry.
Comments: 3
Comments
Comment from jean russell
Time: February 11, 2010, 1:41 am
Goddess you amaze me Stacey. Thank you for being so very real. At different times in my life, I have felt very disconnected from my body. Rather disturbing, it is. One of the things I loved about some of the online communities I have been in, especially 5 years ago or so, was that I wasn’t a body there – I wasn’t nearly 6 feet tall and really I was hardly female or gendered at all. However, now, there is something so very real about connecting with people face to face. To be embodied. To be present to someone else, who is also embodied. We do seem more human that way. More vulnerable and more compassionate.
I look forward to seeing you, in the flesh, at sxsw. I will drink to “retaining humanity in a very geeked out world.”
Comment from Matthias Th.
Time: February 11, 2010, 9:51 am
Many of us believed that endless connectivity and real-time interaction will open incredible new opportunities. We forgot our friends, our kids , our passion and our bodies. We created many virtual identities, lived with them exciting adventures, but almost forgot the warm body sitting in front of the keyboard. We are discovering that almost every piece of our knowledge and interaction with others can be digitized. We smoked too much of this digital stuff. Now, it’s time to come back and discover our bodies, our health and the beauty of just thinking – without a tweet, without a buzz
Comment from Victoria G. Axelrod
Time: February 11, 2010, 11:53 am
I found your post via tweet from Valdis Krebs. “What a gift it is to be incarnate.” Wonderful. Reminds me of the early scene in Avatar where the hero enjoys his new found legs, runs, wiggles his toes in the soil and explodes with happiness for what he has regained.
We do live in a “flat land” online world the way our digital technology exists today, however there is promise that integrated technology will enable our humanity to be more than we are. Have just started reading We Are Not a Gadget. Reminds me of Bill Joy’s piece Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us. Always good to keep us grounded.
The PBS interview with Jaron Lanier, Esther Dyson and Paul Saffo makes a nice context for perspective for Lanier’s book.
Victoria Axelrod
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