The following post is from Love, Zsara:
How often do you glance at your reflection and stop and take a moment to be thankful for what you have? I’ve found that it’s so easy and so common to glance and think ‘God, I hate my thighs’ or even just not to glance at all – since within that reflection are flaws which we’d rather not come face-to-face with, just yet, thank you very much!
The more I thought about it the more I realised that our bodies have to deal with a lot of crap from us humans and didn’t really receive much thanks in return! We, as humans: dye our hair, plaster our faces with make up, smoke, eat unhealthily, don’t drink enough water, wear pretty shoes which don’t fit properly, drink alcohol, go to bed late and drag ourselves out of bed in the morning when the alarm goes despite our body screaming that it needs more sleep!
Our spirit – our personality is nurtured from a young age; we read novels and listen to music, we have long conversations with old friends and go to school. We learn about historical events and trigonometry; we don’t just expect to ‘be’ an intelligent, kind and sensitive human being: we put effort into it.
I think we, as a society have lost the connection between our spirit and our bodies; we choose to see our bodies as shells – shells which should look exactly like the latest trends dictate to us. Sometimes I think it’s much easier to see our bodies as we do our cars – they get us from a to b and we only pay them attention when something goes wrong. Our personalities, our spirits, however, we pride ourselves on being individualistic and quirky; the dusting of freckles on your face, however, isn’t individualistic; it’s something which should be covered up with makeup.
When I say that we should be putting ‘effort’ into having a relationship with our body I don’t mean spending hours sculpting it into the ‘right’ shape by plastic surgery (hello butt implants!) or the daily hours down at the gym. I mean having respect for it – don’t expect it to be perfect if you’re unwilling to spend some quality time with it! Eating the right foods, staying hydrated, exercising regularly (but not to excess!), seeing your body as an extension of yourself.
