A Rusty Ride

Last week I wrote about a series of appointments and tests. Monday I went for a bone density scan. It takes only a few moments - the machine scans your body from navel to knee. As I was leaving the room, I looked at the scan for just a brief moment while they told me the results would go to the doctor that afternoon. When I got home, I told Jon that I believed that they would be calling me and telling me that my scan was abnormal because it looked like my pelvis was light gray, while my femurs were white.

Got the call yesterday afternoon to call my PCP because my bone density scan was abnormal. It was actually kind of funny, because my first thought was "AHA! I was right!" closely followed by "Crap! I was right!" I have always known that I had all the warning signs for osteoporosis. I will be calling to make an appointment this morning to find out if that is in fact what I have. Last night, I awakened with the usual mind wandering and thought about my bones. I eat healthy; I exercise; I lift weights; I age.

It is true that for most of my life I did not pay particularly good care of this shell that I am in. I remembered two things. The first was a part of Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth, where he talks about a life force that resides in this form known as a body. We are not our body, but that essence which animates it. Then I had the remembrance of that scene in Men in Black where a man is apparently severely injured and his face pops open to show a mini-alien driving the body. Two very different memories with a similar theme - that the body is separate from the spirit or life force.

This past year of working on me was twofold - work on my spirit and work on my body. Through this entire process I was thinking of working on me. But I have actually been working on separating the essence of me and the shell, or form, that I am riding in. Now I think that I get it in a whole different way than I got it before. Thanks to the Universe for that one!

It also got me thinking about our responsibility for taking care of forms. We are given the gift of a body for our essence to ride around in and we should take care of it. Just as we should take care of the other forms we inhabit in our existence - our homes, cars, yards, neighborhoods, world! At the end of day (or more appropriately, at the end of our lives), we show our respect for the forms given to us when we show that we have taken care of them. And we show disrespect when we are careless or abuse the forms around us.

They say "What goes around comes around." It is true; so many of us feel abused and disrespected in our lives because we are abusive and disrespectful to our bodies, our loved ones, our homes, our neighbors and our planet. What is coming around to me is some damage for being a poor steward of my form. I hope that I have learned my lesson and will take better care of it from now on. Since I am not interested in more of the same, I will be happy that I actually still have a body to ride around in, even if it looks like it might have some body rust. I am very lucky that I have a ride at all!