Body

I never quite understand it when people say “Your body is a temple;” to me, it’s always seemed more like a spaceship.

After all, it’s not like you get down on your hands and knees and pray to your spleen or whatever; you do, on the other hand, continually use your physical form to carry you wherever you’re going, whether that’s down the block for a drink at the local bar or into outer space to commune with aliens among the heavenly spheres.

No matter how spiritual any one of us is, it’s still the case that everything we do, as long as it’s us doing it, is done through out bodies. Even if I’m lying on my back, staring at the inside of my eyelids, spacing out on a Pink Floyd record, I’m still doing it corporeally. My mind may travel to other places, but only metaphorically.

I suppose it’s possible that this might change after I die, but as long as I’m alive, it’s impossible for me to have an experience that doesn’t depend on the workings of my physical form.

I’m not necessarily taking a so-called hard-core “physicalist” position here, whereby I’m maintaining that all of my mind states are identical with brain states, but I am proposing that nothing that goes on for me goes on without something parallel going on in my body.

Which is why it seems so strange to me that so many people treat their bodies with such disdain. (I’m not exempting myself, either; I run mine hard and put it away wet all the time.)

But it was funny at the car wash yesterday, where Mimi and I took the Ford for its annual clean-up, so see these guys lovingly polishing their automobiles while smoking cigarettes with their fat guts hanging out all over the place.

Maybe they’ll get 100,000 miles out of their vehicles; what’s the chance of getting a full three-score and ten from their hearts?