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LONGING |
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Q.
In retrospect, what would you do differently, if you had it to
do all over again? What do you know now that you wish you had
known then? A. I wish
I had thrown out the bathroom scale at age 16. Weighing
yourself every morning is like waking up and asking Dick
Cheney to validate your sense of inner worth. I wish I had
known that I was beautiful by my 20s, and that what makes a
body so lovely is self-love and care — smoothing delicious
lotions onto your thighs like a gentle yet ferociously
committed mother would. I wish had not felt so shy and
self-conscious in a swimsuit all those years, because I
don’t look quite as much like Brigitte Bardot or Sofia
Vergara as I hoped. I wish I had plunged into even more oceans
and swimming pools than I did, in front of God and
who-cares-who-else-who. I wish I’d known what I wrote to my
grandson, Jax, in “Some Assembly Required,” that everyone
goes through life thinking that he or she missed school on
that one day in second grade when the wise Elder came and
taught the kids the secret of life, of living to find your
self and your own purpose and voice, instead of needing to
become addicted to people-pleasing or domination. But that no
one was there that day. Everyone is flailing through this
life without an owner’s manual, with whatever modicum of
grace and good humor we can manage. -- Anne
Lamott
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