Tonight I sit down to have dinner and watch a movie. I set up the meal, sit down, turn on the DVD player.
Then the chair collapses under me.
I’m angry. I curse. Not the chair, but myself. With all the exercise I try to do (I saw a physical therapist just today!), the care I try to take, and I’m still heavy enough to break my chair. For those of you who’ve been to my apartment: yes, it was the nice comfy one.
I calm down, though I’m still in a bad mood. I set aside the remains of the old chair, put in another one, and start watching the movie again.
The movie is Kung Fu Panda. Not thirty seconds after I pay attention to it again, Po (the title character) breaks through a chair.
OK, universe, I get it! The character of Po learns not to let his shape or its consequences define him. I don’t have to let those things define me either. I might not become a Dragon Warrior, but I don’t have to blindly accept that my physicality is the cause of all my woes.
After all, that chair is popular with my friends. They’ve all plopped into it at one time or another. Sometimes two of them have cuddled in it at the same time. It’s actually the second chair of that type that’s broken, and that one broke because someone else pushed and jumped on it in some agitation.
It’s a cheap chair. Comfy, but cheap. Cheap chairs break.
So I’ll put in an order for a replacement, maybe keep the old cushions, discard what cannot be salvaged.
I’ll still keep trying to exercise to lose weight, but the weight does not define me.
There are times when being a meaning-making animal is more crazy-making than helpful, when we try too hard to make connections between seemingly unconnected events and phenomena. Glad you were able to reframe a lesson in this anyway, one more constructive to your goals 🙂
I love Po and the many lessons he teaches under the guise of ridiculousness.
No, don’t define yourself by anything, except maybe your resilience and your ability to create what you want—or whatever your particular gifts may be.
I wonder what would happen if you took that physicist brain of yours and applied it to the problem of losing weight with great rigor. What would happen?