Our Bodies Aren't Laboratories Or Billboards

(Being sick makes me wander down paths like this one.)

I'm not a health nut by any stretch of the imagination - as one look at my body would assure anyone confused on that point - but I do believe that we should take care of and respect our bodies. Having said that, I know that my diet is not as good as it should be. Take vegetables, for example: most people claim that they're good for you (and I don't dispute that stance)... whereas to my taste buds most veggies are vile-smelling and -tasting, and likely to inspire my gag reflex. As a result, I eat almost no vegetables. Thanks to the influence of my good wife, I load up on fruit, vitamins and fibre supplements to do my part to try to compensate for what I'm missing in the food that I don't eat.

But when it comes to people who abuse their bodies for pleasure or, worse yet, for aesthetic reasons, I'm at a loss as far as understanding it. I've never comprehended why any sane person would, of their own free will, pump themselves full of narcotics, hallucinogens, uppers, downers, or anything else not prescribed by a doctor. It just makes no sense to me. Hence, I don't drink, smoke (tobacco or anything else) or cram other chemicals into my body that were never intended to go in there.

By the same token, I don't get the reasoning behind body piercing or tattoos. Both of those activities smell to me of tribal rituals that, as a species, I'd have hoped that we'd have long since moved beyond by this point in our evolution. Someone with a pierced eyebrow looks to me like an African witch doctor from the dark ages with a bone through his nose. Maybe someone effecting that look is actually trying to get back in touch with some aspect of their genetic memory (which is kind of interesting) but personally, I'm always much more inclined to look forward than backward. And I'm no more likely to inject ink into, or cut pieces out of my body than I am to put out cigarettes on my arm or ask for a toe to be amputated just for kicks.

It'd be nice if this commitment to the sanctity of the body Nature delivered to me roughly 46 years ago meant that I'll still be around and kicking in another 46 years, but that's probably unlikely. Instead, I'll just have to comfort myself with knowing that, for however long I survive - including getting past this current cold, if I do! - I treated my body as well as I could, under the circumstances. That's something, at least.