Bones of Fulfillment

Your body has two functions.  The first is productive.  You’ll probably agree, without a body, not much gets done.

Defacto, you experience life through your body.  Your car or bike is your craft (as in vehicle) through which you navigate transportation.  Your body is your craft through which you navigate life.

You get a body but no owner’s manual. Elders’ instructions are sketchy or faulty because they too didn’t get an owner’s manual.  Our parents’ bumbling efforts to educate us about our bodies have left us with false conclusions, shame and self-blame.  We don’t even know what our bodies are for, not to mention how to use them!

First off, your body is your access to accomplishment and achievement.

You experience fulfillment in your body.  It’s the only place you can experience it because fulfillment means you achieved, attained or completed something.  Setting a goal and achieving it requires the body and action.  If you’re not fulfilled, you must get your body involved, as in “put your heart into it.”  Fulfillment is not a feeling, it is a measurable moment in which you accomplish what you set out to do. You cannot be fulfilled, but your actions can find fulfillment.

The body is the bones and sinews of fulfillment.  All your ideas, plans, preferences; all of these require the body to achieve.  Want to achieve a fulfilling life?  Your body’s going to be in on the action.

Yet a body is more than what you accomplish with it.  Its second function is, as the conduit of all your senses, how you feel while living in it.

This is good news because starting now, you have all your life to create a loving relationship with it.   Beginning right now, cultivating wisdom and delight in your turtle-like nature, carrying your home with you!  Yes, you have a soft exoskeleton while the turtle’s is hard.  Nonetheless, you’re at home right now and always.

Your body is your home.  How do you like your home to look, to feel and smell?  What if you treat your body that way?  Start with cleaning and tidying.  Then elevate your actions beyond the minimum.  Decorate, adorn, show it off.  This is your first impression, your face to the world, your prized piece of real estate.  Give it curb appeal.  This is your refuge.  Make it feel like home.  

Using your body to its fullest potential means you act and strive.  Being at home in your body means you love and nurture it.  Get ready to push when something is important to you.  And allow yourself to luxuriate and rest fully at least one 24 hour period a week, take 48 if you possibly can.  Tinker with your body’s need for sleep, touch, movement and play to discover what makes you feel the most alive.  

The bottom line is: your body is a structure for your pleasure and fulfillment on Earth.  Take it to the limit!