When I was pregnant, I was fat. No really. With toxemia and preeclampsia, my body swelled to the point that even my toes were fat. I have been fat one other time in my life: the three years following the onset of acute asthma after getting the RSV virus, which resulted in needing massive doses of prednisone. Prior to high school, during which I challenged myself once to survive on Tab and gum, I was chubby but not fat. Why all this talk about fat? What does it have to do with wisdom? A little and a lot. Fat is often a mindset. We all have an image of ourselves, and we tend to operate out of that image. As a Therapist, I was amazed at how people perceived themselves. If we are building on knowledge to gain wisdom, it's pretty important to be self aware - at least to the point that we recognize we aren't always self aware. Minor though it is, a good example follows: I have been married 32 years, and when I have a quick thought about my husband, the image in my mind is of a thin guy with muscular arms, a mustache and thick dark brown hair. Very puzzling. If I were to describe him that way to a driver who was going to meet him in a crowded airport and needed to know what to look for, the driver would never find him. Who the driver should be looking for is a handsome (subjectively speaking) guy with a middle-age-guy- belly (affectionately known as his bumper), cleanshaven with white hair cut short and moussed in a modern style. Wisdom dictates that I treasure the image of how this man looked when my hormones were ranging so strong that they chemically carved that image of him in my brain, while embracing the image of this man whom I thankfully wake up to each morning. Well, maybe not the wake up image, but more the one when he's all dressed up in his dark Armani jeans with his cashmere black mock turtle neck sweater and the splash of DG.
In processing this phenomenon, I was reminded that how I imagine things isn't always reality; but the meaning I place on those images can determine what happens in reality. After pregnancy and prednisone, the image that came back from the mirror was horrifying to me. Fat is not fun - at least for me it wasn't. I had to intentionally fight to keep from having that image control how I felt about myself. Most of the time, I chose to have fun anyway. I also chose to go forward until the woman in the mirror began to change. Sometimes there is value in intentionally choosing the meaning we put on our self image, but only as long as we remember what we are doing and not confuse it with facts. The fact of post pregnancy and prednisone was that I was overweight and for health reasons I needed to lose weight. Telling myself I was still attractive and smart didn't change those facts, but it did help me make decisions that changed those facts. It helped me have the courage to keep going until which time people recognized a difference in how I looked and I recognized a difference in how I felt. Last year when things were pretty dismal with my business, I called an older, wiser and much more successful friend. After allowing me a very brief whining session, he said in a less than sympathetic voice, "you'll be fine. You are strong, you are smart, you are besutiful." While I wanted sympathy, he knew I needed a slap of reality, wrapped in a confidence-boosting compliment, and he got the order right, too.
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