Devotion

Maybe I am too attached to this. I mean, I am NOT my weight, but it sure feels like it sometimes. After all, there IS a war on obesity right now.. don't tell them where I live OK? Imagine the scene... a team of white lab-coated dietitians scurrying for cover while I throw lemon bars and fatty meats toward them. I will make it RAIN MILK CHOCOLATE---- MOTHERS! But seriously, I try to dis identify with the number on the scale and I can't. Maybe this is part of the problem.. I can't imagine myself any smaller. I don't have a clue what I would look like or feel like. Sometimes this imagination-block happens in music.
It could be playing a passage over and over with a glitch then discovering that when you sing it...you sing the glitch. In this way, the part of the music that is hanging us up..has made it to our imagination. When you work out the glitch with your voice (free from an external instrument) often when you go back...it plays itself. So in art...imagination is the overlord of reality. It births all known things. Paintings, sounds, dance, buildings...every human endeavor existed as a thought first.
Over-Attachment to music happens too.. It means too much sometimes. It can make me happy or sad. It has too much power. I mean it holds a reverent place in my life, but I am NOT music. I am not my trombone...my piano..my writing. I am separate from all of that and I am USING music to reveal myself...to you...and to me. They call music (and all art) a discipline. Think of a disciple... Why are they devoted? We have free will...so why? Could it be love? Could we want to follow something out of love or reverence? Slide Hampton (Trombone/World Renown composer) talks about why he practices. I remember he said "Music has given me so much, so I practice to give it back"
Pardon my aside with the music example BUT the same principles apply with weight. I am having a hard time imagining myself thinner. So there is my first problem. The second problem has to do with misuse of discipline. I started wanting to move because it made me feel more focused and happy. It made me want to do things...and it helped me get things done. I felt devoted to it because it was changing my life. It wasn't all about my size when I started this time. Somehow, the drive to push myself became less about becoming stronger and faster, and more about "when the hell am I going to lose weight?" I lost sight of why I started out to begin with. I lost my devotion...my discipleship. I want to be thinner...it's true. But more than that, I want to be devoted to my mind...body...my sense of who I am without any labels (talented...funny..sweet..fat..thin..)...devoted to a life that I stumbled upon all by riding my bike with no idea where I might end up.
So I am starting again tomorrow. I am going to go see my friends at the gym. I am going to push...because I can...and that is a miracle. I am going to be happier...and more focused...and I will devote time to the people and the things I love. My wife, friends, animals, the trombone, my garden. I am going to do this because my body will allow it. And because it gives me that...I will give back.

Thank you!

Roy