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I’ve been feeling my bones lately. No, not as in “I can feel my achy old bones,” but literally, beneath the skin. It’s partly because I’ve lost a great deal of weight this past year, due to the good offices of GLP-1 and long daily walks. (It’s also because, as we age, our skin loses collagen, literally becomes thinner. Yes, old folks really are “thin-skinned.” Don’t mess with us.)
And it feels … strange. I don’t remember my bones being right beneath the skin, in such intimate contact. Specifically, I’ve been feeling my rib cage. I’ve come to think of it as a cage—not metaphorically, but literally. It’s a cage that holds the heart and lungs not only for protection, but as a prison, the beating and the breath. Think about that for a minute. Your heart is actually in a cage, like a wild animal, pacing back and forth, unable to roam free. Think of the mighty breaths we could take if our lungs were not knocking against the breastbone! Metaphor is destiny.
What about the mind?
I’ve never bought into the ghost in the machine theory. The mind is not separate from the body, like an air traffic controller directing traffic from the tower. Duality is a myth meant for little kids. Every part of the body is essential. I am my body.
The brain doesn’t sit on a throne, signing executive orders. It goes out to visit every cell in the body through its neural network, like the caliph Harun al-Rashid in The Thousaand and One Nights, going out among his people under cover of the night.
Or, more aptly, the body is a democracy. Every part of the body is in communication with every other part through the exercise of bioelectricity, electrical potentials and currents generated by every living cell. The brain only makes these messages conscious, clothing them in words. When Walt Whitman sang the body electric, he knew what he was talking about.
As Michael Pollan puts it in A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, “the brain exists to keep the body alive.” It’s servant, not king. Trust your gut. Follow your heart. Vote with your feet. These aren’t just sayings. They’re directions.
The brain is literally reformed, rewired with every experience. You’ve got a contractor working in your head who never finishes the job.