When I was younger, I valued my body only for what it could do for me. A quick jog was enough to make me see where I’d been going wrong
I
have just got back from a run. I am shocked to write those words. I think it might have been a decade since my last. But I recently discovered that I have slightly high cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to do sweaty exercise regularly.
This is the first time in my life that my motivation to exercise has been my physical health. In my youth, I ran because I wanted to be thinner. I’ve also run to cure my anxiety (and written about it – I was just running away from the anxiety, not addressing it). At other times, I ran because I wanted to get better at running. This was what it meant to me then to build a better life.
Running for a different reason now got me thinking about the ways I’ve related to my body over my lifetime and how this is changing as I transition from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve respected my body, not deep down. I’ve valued it only for its functions and the purposes it served me: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; running a faster (or, rather, a slightly less slow) 5km. Until today, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it is my life, rather than something that produces results.
