Grateful #38 - listening to our bodies. our temples.

It’s usually our brain.  The thing we fight against, the thing we battle with, plead with, sometimes lose the fight to – it’s usually our brain.  It’s usually our brain that we try to silence when we know we shouldn’t do something that we really want to do.  I am very familiar with this internal struggle, but this time, my brain is not the problem.

I do things to the extremes –when I love something, I love it to excess, and when I do not like something, I want nothing to do with it.  

I am also a creature of habit.   Add excess to habit, and you have the makings of a very good addict. 

My addiction is not exactly unhealthy.  I don’t do drugs and I only have a drink or two on very rare occasions; I know myself better than to think I could do those things in moderation, so I never made them a habit.  Drinking coffee, however, is something that I took out of the average 1-3 mugs per day range, and multiplied it by a billion.  If you look over in my direction, it’s a safe bet  that you’ll see a cup of coffee in my hand.  I didn’t realize how much coffee I was actually consuming, despite the running commentary my friends and family make every time they see me pour another cup.  To me, it was normal.  My normal.  My normal excess.   

So I decided to cut my coffee consumption in half.  While the motivation for this is probably a whole other diatribe in itself, the important part is that I was trying to un-excess something that I love.   And my brain was completely on board; for three weeks I drank 4 cups of coffee per day instead of 8.  I was not battling anything – I was simply drinking much less coffee.   Yesterday, however, time got away from me, when I noticed that it was almost midnight and I only had 3 cups of coffee all day.  I noticed this because my body rebelled against me and the headache that pounded through the walls of my head was so bad, that I had to make a cup of coffee at midnight in order to numb the pain.    

Addiction is mind over matter.  Unless it’s not.  Unless it’s something you can’t talk down off the ledge.  Unless it’s your body’s rebellion.   No matter how much you tell your head to stop hurting, you can’t talk it away.  There’s literally nothing you can do about that pain except endure it.    

I am grateful for the not-so-gentle reminder that our bodies really are our temples. When our bodies are rebelling against us, it’s time examine what we’re doing to cause the rebellion.  We can ignore so many of the things we do to our bodies because they don’t produce such a visceral effect; we can think the bad things away by ignoring them.  But I can’t ignore this; it’s big and bold and it’s telling me to be more conscious.   I often wonder if anyone ever really listens to me.  But more importantly,  I should actually stop and listen to myself, my body, first.