Understanding Hubris from the Inside in Everyday Ramblings
- Aug. 28, 2021, 2:03 a.m.
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- Public
There is a house a few blocks away with a peace rose out front. I have been taking lovely, even sometimes stunning pictures of its various blooms over the years. The house is for sale by one of these buy old houses and churn them for profit places and this makes me sad, and hope that the new owners realize what they have.
This rose is near the fence at the other community garden that I walk by on the way back from mine. It is late here for roses now, but I took this Wednesday. I love the color, the buttery yellow in the early light.
There is an absence of things happening in my world right now. I wait every day for the email from the state health authority to see how we are doing in terms of Covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Kes needs an ultrasound on her ankle and leg and will drive to a facility further away to get it today because her local clinics are overwhelmed. Ankle, driving, further, not making a lot of sense. Maybe she can talk Most Honorable into doing the driving.
We are all making accommodations in so many ways around the scourge of this virus. I have been de-caffeinating over this last week. I don’t drink coffee so my consumption involves, tea, mass quantities of diet soda and, of course, chocolate.
I have listened to a couple of good interviews with this Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke that specializes in addiction who has a new book just out called Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.
Listening to her is helping me understand Charity a little better, even though I still don’t understand what happened there. But it is also helping me understand from a different perspective my relationship with food and soda.
There is so much to be gained (ha!) from the Intuitive Eating Community. I have been practicing and deeply absorbing the principles over the last year. I am at the weight that my body wants to be at. The weight I was at 21. The weight I was when I got married. The weight I was when the lovely man I married loved me wholly. He still cares for me out there in his much more traditional life that suits him, than I could not have made with him.
All this is good. Overall, I am healthy (my hip is still being a little problematic but is not getting worse and it is much better than what was going on with my back last year) and active and relatively stable (I am teaching stability this week, and it is fascinating, all the things that go into it) and a contributing member of my communities.
I realize though that the Intuitive Eating is not bringing me what I long for, which is a balanced relationship with food. Maybe I haven’t experienced it long enough, that is certainly a possibility. I am much happier, less stressed, less preoccupied, less rigid than I was even this time a year ago and I have been having a lot of fun eating things I enjoy (and even growing a few of them)!
Dr. Lembke says, do the thing there in front of you that needs to be done. Focus on that. This all sort of ties into me not being “traditional” enough to make a marriage that is functional and lasts.
Except maybe with cats. Sammy, the incredibly difficult cat, was my longest-term relationship. :) Mr. Finch came in a close second, and he was a most difficult cat as well considering that he was human.
Even Mr. Finch, who was a misogynist and a modelizer, came to realize in his bird’s eye observational skills that my body was the way it was not from lack of trying to make it “other” but because that is the way it is. The hand I was dealt, the package I came in.
One of the things I do appreciate about addicts is their humility. They (we, because there are so many of us with our own unhealthy attachments) fully understand on a fundamental level the cost of hubris.
It seems like we would be living in a more peaceful and nourishing world if our decision makers had that understanding of hubris.
As with my human and feline relationships, apparently, I need to chart my own path in my relationship to food, while drawing on the wisdom that is all about deep nourishment on all the levels.
Lockdown is a good place to start exploring that.
Last updated August 28, 2021
mcbee ⋅ August 28, 2021
I wish I weighed what I weighed at 21.
I think I have been eating intuitively and doing very well. No weight loss, but I believe my nutrition is much improved and I feel better.
A little hint about your past that I never knew, how very interesting.
Beautiful rose, a really unique color.
Deleted user ⋅ August 28, 2021 (edited August 28, 2021)
Edited
That might be the most perfect rose I have ever seen. Thank you for bringing this beauty to everyone's day!
I will have to check out that book.
Funny you should mention decaffeinating. I seem to be going in the opposite direction. Goodness, I had a Dove chocolate bar for breakfast this morning and am on my second mini Diet Dr Pepper. But for some reason--probably dopamine-related--I feel at peace. Or maybe it's because Miranda is away, ha ha. I did stop and think about the chocolate first, though. It is so rare that I eat something like that these days, never mind as the first thing of the day, and after trying to figure out what was compelling me to it, I came to the conclusion that it really didn't matter the reason. In fact, and not needing a reason was the reason, if that makes any sense at all. Life is to be savored and enjoyed and that's okay. And maybe I need some magnesium. ;-)
noko Deleted user ⋅ August 28, 2021
There you go. Savored for sure. The two interviwes I heard with Dr. Lembke were on Fresh Air and the Huberman Lab. The latter is refreshingly long and in depth,.
Marg ⋅ August 28, 2021
That rose is breathtakingly beautiful. I would love an easier relationship with food too or to be a bit less rigid around it although that’s been happening a bit more this last year I’m glad to say. What did you mean about not being ‘traditional’ enough?
noko Marg ⋅ August 29, 2021
I so appreciate how you ask questions in notes. It shows this level of curiosity and caring that is remarkable and those folks that get to work with you (when you have the energy) are lucky. My Mom got sick when I was 12-13 and died a year later. I was the youngest left at home with my older brother and father. They assumed I would take on all the traditional roles, cooking, shopping, cleaning, paying the bills. I rebelled big time, telling my few outside mentors that I was a kid and it wasn't my job. Now in retrospect I realize it was quite a privilege to rebel. If we lived in different times or class I would not have had the choice. I knew if I was forced into that role before I was ready that I would be miserable. I paid a price for that by being literally ejected from the family and sent off to live with my impoverished older sister with two small children. I took care of the kids when they were not in preschool and my sister worked. I still resisted the adult role though and when I was 17 I went off to live with friends. So I was completely unprepared to have dinner parties and do all the shopping and cleaning and cooking and...my husband had a best friend who married about the same time who had a wife who was a genius at that stuff... expectations went unmet. We agreed to separate.
Marg noko ⋅ August 31, 2021
Goodness what an awful time in your teenage years which are troubled enough at the best of times! I think it showed a lot of foresight to realise how taking on that rôle would have impacted on you when so young and want to cheer you on - but then feel so bad that you ended up in a situation where you still had to look after your sister's kids! That seems so unfair! Not to mention the fact that you'd just lost your Mum at such a young age - an event that would have been enough to go through in itself.