The Motivation Question

On days like today, I find myself free to ponder human beings and their motivations to action. Free because if I'm perfectly honest, nothing of spectacular Disappearing interest has happened today. Spent a day down in my Starbucks, having decaffeinated drinks made for me, editing my face off, and generally not moving more than is strictly necessary. Nor am I about to jump on the bike before d gets home, as there are other things that need doing before that happens.

So in an effort to still have something interesting to say (and I use the word "still" here while stretching it to the limits of its productive deployment), I ponder motivations.

When I first started all this, it was very simple - my life felt out of all control, and the doctor was offering me a surgical solution, but I knew myself a little better, and I knew that the surgical solution wouldn't be a solution for me, because it wouldn't stop me behaving the way I did. Almost nothing about my overeating was to do with the taste of food or any sense of hunger. It was more that being big was a shield, a sense of 'who I was,' a kind of camouflage, and a bizarre combination of self-soothing and self-destruction. My initial motivation was not to die, not to become a cliche or a dead weakling who never achieved his potential.

Along the way, I picked up other motivations - freedom, style, access to adventures that had been denied me due to my size, my weight, and the stress I was putting on my system.

Now?
Now it's more a sense of loss that motivates me. Having peaked in at the window of the world as it appeared to me without the weight, I almost pathetically mourn for that world, and I want it back, more than I want the other world of my shield back. It would be easier by far to let things drift and say I tried, but that being fat is my 'destiny,' part of who I am, and just embrace the slide towards knackered knees, increasing heart problems, out of control diabetes and eventually death. Hell, as a kid I never thought I'd especially see forty, so I'm ahead of the game. It would be easy to let go and embrace the life I used to have, rolling the dice with illness for another fifteen, twenty, even thirty years, who knows, and just enjoy myself. But I mourn the opportunities that Disappearing gave me.

The little victories over long-engrained habits. The capacity to do things on a whim, which previously would have needed to be planned in advance, and probably whinged about for the energy they required. The tiny thrill of, for instance, fitting in an airplane seat with a single safety belt, or not having to have 'the big blood pressure cuff' brought out for me on hospital visits. All those tiny things, that amounted to a different way of living, over a sustained period, for the first time in decades. I miss all that.

I guess I'm motivated to think about motivations tonight by the success of a pal of mine. Weight's not his problem, but damned if he wasn't a thirsty lad. Time came when he had to choose whether, in the words of The Shawshank Redemption, to 'get busy living or get busy dying,' which in his case was a choice between getting busy living, or getting busy drinking.
He's been sober for ten months now. Ten months full of those little victories - first time out in company without an alcoholic drink, first month sober, first half-year without any of the blackouts, the emotional disturbances, the chaos that the drinking brought him. Has it miraculously changed his life? I don't know and don't presume to speak for him. All I know is he's still here, and I'm thankful for that. What's more, he's an inspiration.

There's a danger, of course, in making people your inspiration - it can quickly become a pedestal, and negate their capacity to fuck up, to fall off, to go astray and get back on their better path again. But I don't mean to make a saint of anyone. I just mean to say that my pal makes me proud by virtue of his determination and his will power, and I want - as well as all those little victories that come with the journey - to be able to stand alongside him as a conqueror of our individual habits, our cravings, and the lifestyles that went with them, to prove, in essence, that my stubborn bastardy is more powerful than my urge to slowly self-destruct, just as he has proved for ten long months now, that his determination not to lose the game is stronger than the power of the drink.

Does this all mean anything at all? Maybe - it's turned out rather a poor tribute to my pal, I know, but I guess, if anything, it's a hymn to the power of stubborn bastardy. So here's to all the stubborn bastards, for making me want to be numbered in your throng.