Posted on September 1, 2009 - by Rasham

BOOBS, BODY, AND MIND

Curled up against the chilled frame of an airplane window I open my eyes and notice my posture which is a disgrace to my femininity: I’m slouched and appear sloppy. The edge of my bra is visible to anyone who cares to see, peeking up from my over-sized gray t-shirt which I wore to cover the bleach stains on the waist of my favorite jeans. So far it’s been an uneventful, uninspiring flight; the craft seems to glide through the sky so effortlessly it feels as though we are hovering in the atmosphere and not moving at all. Then it happens: first the ‘bing’, seat belt light illuminated, then the tremors begin and are accelerated as people adjust in their seats, then the announcement: ‘ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the seatbelt sign. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts until the captain has announced it is safe to wander about the cabin. Thank you’. Check that, I thought to myself, too comfortable to fix my position whatsoever, I remain slightly exposed and thoroughly messy. The turbulence is violently rocking the airplane, and many passengers awaken from their mile high dreams and look around as though searching for a clue as how to respond: with understandable fear or fearless tranquility. That’s when it first caught my attention: from the corner of my eye I noticed the subtle movement of a boob, my boob, and it thoroughly distracted me and I found myself swept further into the atmosphere though I was already 34,000 feet in the air.

My first thought: ‘how long has it been there (my boob)?’ For twenty six years I have had this body, though not really. Me and my body go way back, though how far back I cannot remember, for it has changed and I have changed, like with the addition of boobs (and my mental adaptation to the inevitable addition of boobs). I wonder about my relationship with my body, and I notice that I am separating the idea of ‘me’ with the concrete existence of ‘my body’. Glancing down at freckles (right boob named for wounds incurred while surfing plus one bikini minus one rash guard) I think of how little attention I give to the physical ‘me’, how I assume its tangibility and mobility, though never really granting it any responsibility of personal identity. It’s all there: freckles, the other one and all the rest of my body, my instrument, my tool, my home really.

Mind and body: two separate things? Yes. Without a shadow of a doubt. How else can I account for my strange relationship with this, this thing? I am my head, my thoughts, my mind, my emotion, my soul, my ability, my desires, my passion. My body is simply the means for utilizing, expressing, achieving, surviving these things. In our first years on earth we are born into our bodies and (because of a lack of better option) we struggle to learn the limits of our operating mechanism, sometimes painfully (we cry when we fall down go boom) sometimes with great happiness and success (our first ride on a bike with training wheels off).

However we sometimes think we are our faces, our outfits and the length of our legs. We are identified based upon these facets of ourselves by our governments, institutions, and societies. So be it: to all the world I am a face and a name, to transportation security the information on my ID card, to the police the black and grey mug shot complimented by the description of my physicality: ‘no tattoos, with piercings’. These are but shallow observations which only serve to best expedite the process of cataloging a dangerously overpopulated planet. Thus body becomes identity, mind becomes obsessed with image, and body rules the mind. Umm, would you care for another non-fat-half-decaf-mocha frap-no-whip with your copy of ‘how do I look’ magazine?

Not that taking care of your casing shouldn’t be important: it needs attention, and it is designed to remind us of that natural fact (it emits foul odors reminding us to bathe, pains our guts when we deprive it of nutrition, chokes our throats when we have ignored the need for water). Our bodies are the only way we are allowed to survive, given to us by the mysterious Gods or the basic truth of evolution (and the passions of our parents): our brain needed a vat, and it was given a whole human body. How about that?

Some people say that indeed the mind and the body are so connected in every respect that the one is a cause for the other, and vice versa, (this is a theory called ‘Monism’ in the language of philosophy). They are those that say that we have reactions in our brains which cause such and such chemical firings which lead to such and such reactions which influence our fragile balance which cause manifested physical actions. So these things like love and anger and passion and desire become attributed to the physical tangible nature of our bodies and have nothing to do with an abstract non-physical concept ‘mind’, therefore shunning the notion that mind and body are isolated. Our minds, they say, are formed by the experiences of our bodies. Our actions, they say, are influenced by the cellular and genetic make-up of our bodies. Thus our bodies rule like kings over our minds, because there is only one reality, and everything can be reduced to matter.

But put yourself in a dark closet: power off your body, if you will. No sight, no senses, no smell, no touch, nada. Just you, your mind is all you discover, your thoughts which are uninhibited by the limitations you have placed upon your body. Tie me up and sew my mouth shut and I still exist, I still have thought: I am my mind and my mind will adapt despite the condition of my body, whether it be mutilated, severed, restricted, confined, overweight or under dressed.

Mind is mind, body is body. Mind tries to understand body and in doing so confuses the two. If mind and body are truly equal, if it is the case that I cant have mind without body and body without mind then why does my brain challenge the existence of my body? Why does the brain which discovered science isolate itself from the body and then propose the truth that they are not separate? My body never challenged the existence of my mind. It can’t. It’s subordinate. It’s at the mercy of me, my mind (insert evil laugh here).

This topic is one of pure mental masturbation, I know (one way mind and body are the same). I have always seen the human race as a lot of intricately designed puppets controlled by the hands of a mini-person sitting comfortably within the essence of the body, the identity, the personality, the character, the brain; how so ever you wish to understand it. Glancing down at my own body I was suddenly aware of how isolated I can sometimes become from my appearance, and I cannot say that this is true for everyone, but how amazing a picture of the world when we imagine that we have the power of action, that we do not attribute love and rage and hate and depression to molecular happenings said by science to be largely predetermined at birth and outside the scope of mental control? How awkward a thought of the world where instead of people we imagine the human body as a vehicle and the mind the cockpit, possessing the ability to move the earthbound matter in accordance with one’s values and will?

I am dangerously close to having to assess the topic of reincarnation, so I’ll tuck my boob back in my shirt and enjoy the rest of the flight.