Well....yesterday was fun. Turned into "Everybody Loves Tony" around here - apparently, yesterday's blog post struck a chord or two out there in the world of the interweb. Good, good. Fame and glory gratefully accepted...not to say expected...
It occured to me of course that when I started all this, it was principally as a health measure - when I started, I was radically unhealthy, and had peeing blood for no identifiable reason, but everyone said it was probably weight-related. My diabetes had started kicking if not my ass, then certainly my circulation, my liver and my eyeballs, and it was becoming a question of exactly how stupid I wanted my life to be: Did I want to eat myself to death, or did I want to stand against the flow of the inevitable mathematics of self-destruction and see what my stubborn bastardy could do?
And along the way, certainly, things have changed for the better - I gained a heart condition and lost some hearing, certainly, but in terms of my physical ability, I now live in a whole different world - and of course we're faaaaar from finished yet. I understand that there's yet another world of possibility waiting for me further down the line - in fact, probably there are two - one at around the 13 stone mark, and another when I reach my ultimate goal. I may be coasting at the moment (which of course is ultimately the way to drift back up), but I will get there.
But I think, possibly, the healthy angle has become something of a hypocrisy in me. Am I doing this now to improve my health? Yes, still...but not principally. Now I think it's mainly a vanity thing. Looking at myself in the mirror - which admittedly, I now do far more often than I used to (see - vanity) - I'm still not happy with the way I look. And call me shallow, but I think most of the reason to still be doing this, in my mind, is related to all the things I mentioned yesterday - the cool factor, the sexy factor. I want to look different because then I will feel different about myself. Sure, not peeing blood is great, but I'm already there. If it was all about the health angle any more, there'd be no particularly burning incentive to carry on. You want an incentive to carry on at this point, you have to go to Al Pacino's Satan in The Devil's Advocate:
"Vanity...is definitely my favourite sin. So basic: self-love, the all-natural opiate..."
But fat man vanity is something altogether more interesting than handsome man vanity, or pretty girl vanity. Vanity in our case can actually achieve a kind of hideous nobility - it's the embodiment of the will to power, the idea that you've heard a thousand times from people with no current control over themselves or their lives - "Inside every fat person, there's a thin person trying to get out". How do you think you actually get it out? you don't do that through the threat of surgery or the imminence of illness - no, that's enough to save your life and get you back into the realm of the "generally acceptable". To get you where you want to go...that takes vanity.
The trick of course is knowing when your vanity has done its job, and being able at that point to cut it loose, before any nobility in its nature turns to utter self-regard and self-revolution. If that happens, all you are is a skinny prick - and the point is, you don't need to be skinny to be a prick. you can be a happy, full, calorifically ignorant prick and enjoy your coast over the Grand Falls of this life. Use your vanity to get you where you beileve you want to be...but always, always, always know when to cut it loose before it kills you, just as surely as the fat would have done. When I get without shouting distance fo where I need to be, I may need one or two of you to step up and have the cojones to call me a vain prick...
Deal?
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