Age or Weight?
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Every now and then, a ridiculous question pops into my head. A would-you-rather-type inquiry. And when this happens, I sit there, in my cloud of silence and have a little debate with myself. When this debate goes on long enough, I realize that maybe I have a question worth asking others. Even if it is a bit bizarre and borderline embarrassing.
Would you rather pick a weight at which to stay or an age at which to die?
I told you. Random. Odd. Embarrassing. But I sat there in the shiny new coffee shop on Amsterdam Avenue while Toddler was in art class thinking about this. Really, I was thinking about control. How there are some things in life we have a bit of control over, but not total control. Like our weight. Like our mortality. We can all make good choices. We can forgo the sugars and be diligent about visiting doctors. But, sometimes, life is out of reach.
And so. Here we have it. A silly question that’s maybe not so silly. Most of us (maybe all) care about how we look and how we feel. We want to feel attractive and vital and alive. Most of us wish the scale would go down a few numbers, that we could indulge in our favorite foods and see no consequence. Imagine if we could just pick a number and that’s what we’d be. Forever.
Most of us (maybe all) care about how long we live. We have loved ones who need us and we want years to do good things that matter to us. Most of us wish we could be given some guarantee that we will live extensive and healthy lives, that we will not be struck by cancer or a city bus, that we will be here for the long haul. Imagine if we could just pick a number and that’s how long we’d live.
What would you choose? Would you want to choose either? Is there some virtue in that dancing scale, in contingency, in change? Is there some inherent power in not knowing how long we have to become who we are? Are the shades of mystery, and the looming lack of control, things that make life worth living somehow?
This is not just about fat and fatality, is it?
**Snack-sized post here. So I can spend the extra time responding to your words and visiting you at your bloggy spots!**
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Age or weight? Are you ever overcome by bizarre existential inquiries or am I the only one? Do you think it would be terrible to know exactly how long you will live or would this information give you some peace? As a culture, do you think we have become far too fixated on numbers (age, weight, salary, blog comments)?
** Join me tonight Thursday, December 9th from 8-11pm EST for my SheKnows book club discussion of LIFE AFTER YES (their final pick of the year!). Click here to join the book club (takes two minutes!) and then visit this link tonight to participate in the chat. I have no doubt it will be a fun few hours and I very much hope to see you there!**
Everyone struggles and...
For a completely silly reason, I would love to pick my weight and stay there the rest of my life. Not so much for the food I could eat – I try to eat well for health’s sake, not weight – but so that I would never have to worry about not fitting into my favorite clothes!
Of course, some of those clothes not fitting have nothing to do with weight, and everything to do with the new way said weight is distributed after having two children, so maybe, if I’m wishing, I could also wish for a few things to shift back to where they were in college? I would really love to be able to wear my wedding dress at least once more!
Wow! What a great, thought provoking post! I love random questions, that stop you in your tracks and make you think. My initial gut reaction answer to this question would be weight. I would love to pick a number, and wha-la! That is my weight forever! I even know instantly what number I would pick without thinking. I have struggled for a long time with weight and that silly number on the scale. I don’t know why I care so much. Wait. Yes I do. Because it makes me feel better about myself when I am a certain size. Sad, that as women we feel so much of our self worth is wrapped up in a number. But, I am being totally honest, and a little bit vain. If I had to pick, that is what I would pick. The number on the scale. I wouldn’t want to know when I was going to die. I would hate if I picked a really old age, which of course is what I would do! What if something happened to someone I dearly loved more than life itself at a younger age and I would have to knowingly spend years without them? It would be too much for my heart to take.
So, I pick weight.
Way to wake my brain up this morning! Like many of these binary hypotheticals, this one begs for further information. If we choose the age, are we assured that we will be in good health at that age. If I were to say 100 years, but run the risk of my final 10 years being plagued with physical or mental illness, I might end up wishing I’d chosen 90. If we choose the weight there are probably fewer variables to factor into the decision. Nevertheless, it’s always uncomfortable choosing the prize behind Door #2 when we don’t know what we passed up behind Door #1.
These are important follow up questions, but I think that if we pick an age, we just get the age. We cannot guarantee that we will be in perfect health. Patently, we will be in good enough help to live until the age we choose, but that’s really all we can know. This makes it hard to decide, no? Same with weight. We can pick weight, but we cannot necessarily fine-tune what our body will look like. A 125 pound 25-year-old might look leagues different than a 125 pound 85-year-old… Why these rules? Because, hey, I’m boss
Definitely an age. I want my kids to live to at least 100 and for me to see it, so our plan is I’ll live to 134 and my husband to 137. Come on, scientists and researchers, I need your help. I want to *enjoy* all those years.
Wouldn’t it be truly amazing if medical advances in the next little while actually made it possible that we would live well past a century? I’m not sure how I feel about this. And my kids are two and three. Hard to imagine them at 100! Hard to imagine myself at 100!
I love these type of questions!
Hands down, I pick my weight. For two reasons. One, I just know that I’d start a depressing countdown until death day. This countdown would inevitably stress me out, as it would be one more thing I’d have to keep track of. I also know that I would obsess about whether or not I was using my remaining time appropriately and efficiently. If it’s one thing my few short months of “living in the real world” has taught me, it’s that living shouldn’t feel like a job.
My second reason is for pure vanity. Who wouldn’t want to keep their pre-graduate school body for the rest of their life? All that I have to do is look thirty and fifty years down the line at my mother and grandmother – I know exactly where I’m headed!
Part of what makes life great is that nothing is for certain – except death and taxes right? But knowing how much time we each have left on this earth is speculative. This is what inspires me REALLY live. I’d rather live my life well each day, not knowing. And if I could look good for the rest of my life, that’s just an extra bonus
I agree with you on a couple of things. I think it would utter torture to know just when I was going to die. The countdown would complicate and cloud my life in ways I would never want. I also think that the impetus to live good and full days and not waste moments comes from the basic if harrowing reality that we do not know how long we have. As hard as this is sometimes, I wouldn’t trade it.
I’m going with weight and not because of my profession or because I feel it’s more important. After all, what good is a good weight if you aren’t here? I choose weight because I feel taking that off the table would leave me a few minutes more in the day to enjoy my kids, my husband and my life in general. I don’t know if I need 100 years either. Maybe fewer happy, healthy, skinny years is better than a whole bunch of miserable ones.
I am a control freak… I try not to be and its a character defect that I need to be continuous working on. Sometimes its needed, especially as a mom or in my job. But a control freak like me shouldn’t be given an option! If I got to choose my weight or how long I live … I would constantly be negotiating if things weren’t going my way! Its best if I don’t have such power.
I’m going with neither. Focusing on either seems to fit into that delusion of “If only I weigh this much, or live this long, then my life will be this happy”, etc. Rather, I am attempting (and it is super hard) to recognize that my obsessive thoughts about weight or happiness are distractions from feelings, frustration or anxiety.
These are indeed delusions. But how many of us sometimes find ourselves saying and thinking these things… If only I lost X pounds, if only I made X amount of money, etc, I would be happy. We all know that this is not how happiness works, that it is far more elusive and exquisite than a series of arbitrary numbers, but it is hard to remember this sometimes. I do also agree that the doubts, the obsessive thoughts, are often symptoms of very different maladies that we are afraid to address.
Age- Since you didn’t place any restrictions on this I am going to say that I’ll figure out the perfect diet and exercise for me so maintaining weight will be “easy’ to do.
Not to be a downer, but I have been to the funerals of a few friends and they died way too early. If I could I’d live to be a thousand years old. There are so many things that I want to do and that would give me time to do them.
When you figure out that perfect diet and exercise plan, make sure to share it with us all! In all seriousness, I agree with you (and this is likely what prompted this nutty question in the first place) – too many people leave us too soon. I remember when my father found out he was sick – at 65 years old – and he just felt so sad and cheated because he had so many ideas to explore and things he wanted to do. It was heart-breaking to watch him accept the fact that the end was coming and their were very real limits to what he could do.
I’ll take option C: I don’t worry much about my weight or about how old I’ll be when I die, but I do worry about dying with dignity and without suffering. Hopefully, that will happen at a ripe, old age.
I have to agree with Kristen. I wish to die with dignity and with no suffering. I also don’t want to be a burden to anyone. As long as my brain is intact and I can take care of myself. Great post!
I’m female so naturally I’m going to go with weight. I wish I didn’t have to get older but since I’m at peace with that already I’d rather look great when I die, whether it be tomorrow or at 90.
But I must say, I really hope I don’t live until 90!!
It’s an interesting discussion even though it seemed a bit hollow on the surface. Nothing at your place ever stays that way long.
So. I wouldn’t take that power if you gave it to me.
The struggle for weight and health…it makes something of me. Carves at me. Sands me into who I am. And, while I don’t like the sanding (or sometimes sandblasting!) I like how I BECOME someone.
Wanting chocolate cake every hour of every day and learning that…well…I don’t actually want it has been revelatory for me. I think health has been a factor in that. I want some transcendent things I can’t quite see and they are worth wiggling around in the muck to get them.
Does this make any sense?
I think I was at first embarrassed to post this question because it appeared hollow to me too. But then the more I thought about it – and still think about it – I realized that this is about much bigger things than body size and life length. This is about control and chance and choice. This is about what makes life worth living, the contingencies we’d surrender in an effort to know, the relationship we have with ignorance about self and world.
I agree with you – and deeply – that there is something so important about the process of becoming who we are. There is indeed salvation in the struggle to evolve as we do.
(Your words make a ton of sense to me.)
I would definitely pick the age to control. You can already, more-or-less, control your weight, if you are so inclined.
Age, for sure!