City Of God 48

"Something needs to change. And it starts with you." That bit of graffiti I used to see almost every day while walking along East Pender Street just past Chinatown, going downtown. I always took that as a personal message, to be inwardly pondered and digested and lived. A young woman with whom I was connected in a charismatic Christian community said it another way: "God not only loves us just as we are--he loves us too much to leave us that way." More living words to live by. This is the kind of change, growth, improvement of self that I can endorse, and for the simple reason that we just simply never are there, we have never arrived, there is always going to be new ground for us to gain, new territory in our lives to conquer. This has nothing to do with the relentless egress of modernity, even if there are parallels, and even if the forward thrust of modernity has affected our notions of growth and personal change, which it indeed has. This also gets carried into the extremes of neurosis. Early one morning, I was out for a walk in a park nearby (forgive me, Gentle Reader, if I am repeating myself here, because I might well have written about this already in an earlier post). There was a group of a dozen or so young women exercising in a kind of fitness boot camp. They all looked like successful young professionals, driven to stay competitive and to do well in their professions, which is to say, corporate slaves. They were all lying on the grass doing leg raises and suchlike and their trainer, a blonde young women who could easily have doubled as Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. I can't remember if she was wearing tight black leather, but she should have been, and when I commented "Ah, the fascism of fitness", and at least two of her participant fitness slaves burst out laughing, I am sure she would have aimed her whip at me had she been carrying one (and maybe she did have a nice leather buggy whip hidden away in her goody bag somewhere. And yes, she was blonde, and I'm sure she had high cheekbones.) Yes, we need to change. We all need to change and grow. No, we are not okay the way we are, never were and never will. It would help if we would stop hating ourselves. No matter how much we immerse ourselves in the cult of self-improvement, there will always be room for more. it is the gift that goes on giving. We need to know where to draw the line and when to blow the whistle on our self-loathing, but we also need to know when we are becoming stagnant and too comfortable with our crappy attitudes and behaviour. Not an easy balance. I try to use common sense. I eat well, carefully, making sure I get a good balance from all the food groups, but I also prepare food that I will enjoy eating and I don't deny myself pleasures of chocolate or good cheese. Food has to be enjoyable, though, and kale is not an option. Exercise? yes, every day, around two hours or more of walking if I can fit it in. I have added walking up the seventy-one stairs to my fifth floor apartment at least once a day, instead of using the elevator, and doing more upper body exercise at home, because my body has been craving more activity. I have never had, and never will, have a killer body, and really, who can live photo-shopped twenty-four hours a day? I do all the other healthy stuff too, without getting obsessed about it. But the important thing is beauty of soul. Becoming a person who is truly good, kind and loving. A person who cares for others. A person who doesn't simply live for himself. A person. There will always be challenges and obstacles to self-improvement, and I think it would help to know when to let it all go for a while and simply accept that we are not there, will likely never get there, but we can still keep moving in that direction, on our pilgrimage to the City of God.