I had the most amazing conversation yesterday.
I was talking to a coworker of mine about something work-related, and it evolved into a conversation about aspirations and dreams. Then it turned into a conversation about people's perceptions of us, and she mentioned that people perceive her negatively because she is overweight.
I said that I understood exactly what she meant, because I used to be overweight, and people totally changed how they interacted with me around the time I hit a size M. She was surprised that I understood what she was talking about at all. Suddenly, we got deep. It was 6pm on a Friday when the sane people had gone home and immersed themselves in other worlds. We were still at work like crazy people. She talked about her feelings about food and her journey with her weight. I talked about how I'd lost weight involuntarily because I couldn't afford food. We both, it turns out, felt that weight is protective. I look more my age now, but when I lost weight I looked young and didn't want people to see me as easy prey. When I was heavy, it was easy enough to tell if I would win a fight just on the benefit of gravity alone because I was in a much higher weight class than most men with mobility. She talked about sharing the same insecurity and how she had come to terms with it in her own way.
All this came back to a sense of purpose. I'm not someone who confuses weight loss with purpose but in a world obsessed with appearances, it's impossible not to struggle with appearances if you are living a goal-driven life where appearances can stop your progress or advance it just because of people's prejudices. Most purposeful people became that way because they had to suffer and struggle, and they realized that the only power we have in life is to live it with intention and came to a place where we cannot possibly live without living purposefully. As she talked about her struggles in life as related to her weight, I realized that those struggles also related to her sense of purpose. I gained a new respect for my coworker. Not primarily because of her weight loss journey but because I know that she has fought to become who she wants to be with some successes and some frustrations, and I know that her beauty goes deep.
I'm fortunate to have some incredible people in my life.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2QfRDjg
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