Obey Gravity, Its the Law

My husband came across an old DVD the other day that his brother had given us.  On it was video from Christmas 2000 and 2004.  Now we are not one of those families who records every event for posterity.  We've never even owned a video camera so seeing ourselves on screen is rare.

I can't tell you what I weighed eleven years ago but it was definitely more than I weigh now.  I could tell though, from the way I was moving around, that my physical health and mobility had not yet deteriorated to the state I was in before my surgery.  My husband did not remember that I was so big back then.  I know I had decided at one point that I was not going to do any more dieting since every weight loss was followed by a gain of what I'd lost plus more.  Staying the same, however, is not what happened.  My body was stressed in many ways until I developed serious health problems.

All of us had changed since that footage was filmed.  My kids were still in their teens.  The adults were less wrinkled and had fewer gray hairs.  We tend to forget that we are constantly morphing even if the process is too slow for us to notice.  Check out this link my friend Dan Simpson made about gravitational pull.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnxyZubbBGA&feature=email

Gravity never quits (unless, of course, you are an astronaut) so that body parts do not always remain where they once were.  When my daughter was about six years old she told me "Grandma says if you wore a girdle you wouldn't look so fat".  (She still isn't very good at keeping secrets)  My mother vehemently denied that she uttered that statement.  Nevertheless, the thought was back in the 50's and 60's was to wear sturdy undergarments to avoid looking "sloppy"  My feeling for girdles was that it might hold you in but the fat had to go somewhere.  The term "muffin top" wouldn't be invented till the 21st century but believe me, they existed before.  Since so many of my generation burned their bras the girdle didn't stand a chance.  Spandex has come in and out of vogue.  Hemlines go up and down.  No matter what happens with styles there is just so much that you can conceal.  My philosophy is that you aren't fooling anybody.

Hair is another matter.  We want more hair where there is not enough yet we grow abundant unwanted hair in other places.  This is yet another example of how we always want what we can't have.  Americans seem more concerned with this problem than the rest of the world.  Are European women shaving their armpits these days?  Do men in other countries get their eyebrows waxed?  There are so many products to get hair to ignore it's own better judgement and act like someone else's.  I've had a few perms in my life but now my hair curls like a perm all by itself. When I was younger my mother sometimes would ask me if I forgot to comb my hair.  These days people spend lots of time and money to make themselves LOOK like they forgot.  I'm inclined to think it would be better to just stay in bed a little longer and do the bed-head look for real!

Whether or not you believe in an afterlife we are all one day closer today than we were yesterday.  Healthy choices can push the inevitable further into the future and make our time here more enjoyable.

Love to all,
Marlena of Mohegan