Do we truly see others around us?
In a world full of people who often act ambivalent and unkind, it is so important to be the kind of person that can look someone in the eye, smile, and SEE them. It’s interesting how age never dulls the sting of careless words. Costco, oh Costco. How I have a love/hate relationship with you. I lapped around the packed parking lot several times and finally found a prized spot, for me, next to a cart drop off. I nonchalantly got out of my vehicle, lost in thought, I was going over my list in my head. Stick to the list girl!
Not 5ft from my car and I hear words. Words spoken about me, at me, intentionally loud enough for me to hear. A male voice who emphatically said, “damn, look at that girl! She’s huge!”.
I turned around to see a middle age man with his wife/girlfriend spin quickly around and immediately start packing up groceries.
Fool, I know I am fat. I am 300 lbs, the heaviest I have been in my life. Body image and feeling beautiful is something I have struggled with my whole life. Even when I was a 5’7” 135lb size 9. I weighed a thin, healthy 125lbs in high school and my mom made me go on diets with her. The beet diet, the hospital cardiac veggie soup diet. I was young, athletic, fit and so busy with school my body handled to odd dieting without a problem.
College. Oh, college and boys. I barely ate in college and took a lot of vitamins so I didn’t really get sick. I was on the lacrosse team so I ran. I ran at practice and I ran outside of practice. I was a healthy thin but it felt really good to go from jeans being tight to loose. I was going through cycles where I starved myself and then binged on food. Ok, really, binge for me was normal eating and indulging in beloved foods like pizza with ranch to dip it in. Ok, yeah alcohol too. Over the span of my college years I completely wrecked my metabolism.
Many physical and emotional traumas, loss, SO many losses, high cortisol levels from constant stress, surgeries, health difficulties and here I am. Not that any of that knowledge would have bothered that guy. I am a 43 year old, 300lb woman flung back into times of feeling that my worth, being loved, being SEEN was tied to my weight. Not gonna lie. It hurts damn it! It hurt at 16, it hurt at 20, and it hurts now.
All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum
All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten.
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not
at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm.
Think what a better world it would be if
all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had a basic policy to always put thing back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you
are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
© Robert Fulghum, 1990.
Found in Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten Villard Books: New York, 1990, page 6-7.
(St. Faustina’s Prayer to be Merciful)
Help me, O Lord, that my eyes may be merciful, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look for what is beautiful in my neighbour's souls and come to their rescue.
Help me, that my ears may be merciful, so that I may give heed to my neighbours' needs and not be indifferent to their pains and moanings.
Help me, O Lord, that my tongue may be merciful, so that I should never speak negatively of my neighbour, but have a word of comfort and forgiveness for all.
Help me, O Lord, that my hands may be merciful and filled with good deeds, so that I may do only good to my neighbours and take upon myself the more difficult and toilsome tasks.
Help me, that my feet may be merciful, so that I may hurry to assist my neighbour overcoming my own fatigue and weariness. My true rest is in the service of my neighbour.
Help me, O Lord, that my heart may be merciful so that I myself may feel all the sufferings of my neighbour. I will refuse my heart to no one. I will be sincere even with those who, I know, will abuse my kindness. And I will lock myself up in the most merciful Heart of Jesus. I will bear my own suffering in silence. May Your mercy, O Lord, rest upon me.
Amen.
Not 5ft from my car and I hear words. Words spoken about me, at me, intentionally loud enough for me to hear. A male voice who emphatically said, “damn, look at that girl! She’s huge!”.
I turned around to see a middle age man with his wife/girlfriend spin quickly around and immediately start packing up groceries.
Fool, I know I am fat. I am 300 lbs, the heaviest I have been in my life. Body image and feeling beautiful is something I have struggled with my whole life. Even when I was a 5’7” 135lb size 9. I weighed a thin, healthy 125lbs in high school and my mom made me go on diets with her. The beet diet, the hospital cardiac veggie soup diet. I was young, athletic, fit and so busy with school my body handled to odd dieting without a problem.
College. Oh, college and boys. I barely ate in college and took a lot of vitamins so I didn’t really get sick. I was on the lacrosse team so I ran. I ran at practice and I ran outside of practice. I was a healthy thin but it felt really good to go from jeans being tight to loose. I was going through cycles where I starved myself and then binged on food. Ok, really, binge for me was normal eating and indulging in beloved foods like pizza with ranch to dip it in. Ok, yeah alcohol too. Over the span of my college years I completely wrecked my metabolism.
Many physical and emotional traumas, loss, SO many losses, high cortisol levels from constant stress, surgeries, health difficulties and here I am. Not that any of that knowledge would have bothered that guy. I am a 43 year old, 300lb woman flung back into times of feeling that my worth, being loved, being SEEN was tied to my weight. Not gonna lie. It hurts damn it! It hurt at 16, it hurt at 20, and it hurts now.
I am a 43 year old, 300lb woman flung back into times of feeling that my worth, being loved, being SEEN was tied to my weight.
I hate my weight. Sometimes, I hate my body. A few days after Costco I started trying to measure out amounts and count calories in precise numbers. Seductively drawing me back into the disordered eating of my past. No. No! Not going there again. I have done some heavy thinking these last couple of weeks. Fatness, being morbidly obese, makes you feel invisible. In many ways, it makes you feel safe, insulating you from outside hurts. You feel you can control the world around you by controlling who can get close to you. So when that invisibility and control and safety is penetrated by a middle age jerk it snaps you out of your cozy bubble back into the real world.
See the people around you. Smile at strangers. Ask the checker at Walmart how their day is going an mean it. Pray for that woman exasperated by a screaming toddler. And for heaven’s sake, if you have nothing nice to say keep your mouth closed. Let me leave you with some passages of a lovely book and a recently discovered prayer that we should all say daily. God give you peace on your journey.
All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum
All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten.
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not
at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm.
Think what a better world it would be if
all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had a basic policy to always put thing back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you
are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
© Robert Fulghum, 1990.
Found in Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten Villard Books: New York, 1990, page 6-7.
(St. Faustina’s Prayer to be Merciful)
Help me, O Lord, that my eyes may be merciful, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look for what is beautiful in my neighbour's souls and come to their rescue.
Help me, that my ears may be merciful, so that I may give heed to my neighbours' needs and not be indifferent to their pains and moanings.
Help me, O Lord, that my tongue may be merciful, so that I should never speak negatively of my neighbour, but have a word of comfort and forgiveness for all.
Help me, O Lord, that my hands may be merciful and filled with good deeds, so that I may do only good to my neighbours and take upon myself the more difficult and toilsome tasks.
Help me, that my feet may be merciful, so that I may hurry to assist my neighbour overcoming my own fatigue and weariness. My true rest is in the service of my neighbour.
Help me, O Lord, that my heart may be merciful so that I myself may feel all the sufferings of my neighbour. I will refuse my heart to no one. I will be sincere even with those who, I know, will abuse my kindness. And I will lock myself up in the most merciful Heart of Jesus. I will bear my own suffering in silence. May Your mercy, O Lord, rest upon me.
Amen.
