Over the past six weeks, I have being doing the Body For Life program, in a highly overdue project to regain my physical fitness. I was hungrily looking forward to gaining something that resembles pectoral muscles, and maybe develop “abs,” instead of my former, singular “ab.”
But, damn, this process takes way longer than I thought.
Of course, the lack of seeing the results that I want to see doesn’t diminish the glimpses of progress I occasionally do witness, usually the morning after I get back from working the upper body, when my muscles have a little more blood pumping through them. And as a guy, I hear we males have this “issue” happening anyway, where we look in the mirror and almost always think that we’re pretty much the bomb-dot-com. I don’t know why that is, maybe it’s physiological, or some kind of DSM-IV category, but suffice to say that I rarely have a less-than-glowing review of my reflection ready to print.
I’d never really thought about that phrase before this morning — “full of myself” — I mean, really thought about it. But this morning, for whatever reason, I was keenly aware that I was entirely full of myself, in the “no room for anything else” sense.
And that bothered me.
I don’t want to be so crowded with myself that I cannot even find room for others in my margins. I don’t want my world to be filled with clones of me. I don’t want my bus to be standing room only. I don’t want to be filled to the brim of nothing but me, me, me.
I want to be able to give, generously and passionately.
But who would even want what I have to give? Someone I consider to be very wise once said that we do and say is actually just a reflection, an extension, of what’s going on inside us. So, if that’s the case, who’s going to want more of me: sick and ugly and only taken with, well, me?
I’m fairly certain that swallowing too much narcissism will make us throw up; maybe a little regurgitation is exactly what I need. Maybe I can fill up on something else.
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