“Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.”
-Marcus Aurelius
“It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable”
-Socrates
A sign that our soul has begun to give up is when we give up on our body’s physical potential. Our commanding soul slips into failing to provide our body it’s proper fuel, food and movement and influences, it’s push to be beautiful and strong.
Our body should be a slave to our soul…but without caring for our body our soul withers as a slave fails to serve its master. We hear this disrespectful self-talk in the “that’s just me getting old” garbage that spews from us as we grow in years, or as we get upset with our performance or an injury. Of course we change as we age, but seldom with the grace we COULD age with if our defeatist and irresponsible soul didn’t leave our bodies to dry with negative self-talk and habits that follow.
Why WOULDN’T we slow down and walk, then sit, then lay down, when the commanding soul has already given up?
We say our body is old or broken, but how often do we command it like we should? Have we been treating our body with respect? An unworked, unpushed and disrespected slave gets weak and fails to serve.
Our body needs and depends on it’s commanding soul to run shit, not the blame for failing us. It needs us to control our habits, supply our body with proper food and movement, sleep, social interaction and drive. The inputs that control the outputs. Each wildly different body needs a modified path, and that comes from the top. Bitching about our bodies and how “different” they are doesn’t change them, respectfully taking charge and ownership of them does. Additionally, how does our whining capitulation serve us and those around us?
If we’re ready to slide slowly into prematurely feeding the worms, dying faster and faster until our last day of death, then we forfeit our privilege to whine about our bodies and how they “fail us”.
And it’s not too late, for any of us, to slay the sloth that took over in a moment of weakness and to take back command. We can straighten our path from the top.
As our body strengthens so does our soul, but we need our soul to take ownership. Like the heart and the brain need each other, strength of either strengthens the other, and we should give up on neither.
