This excerpt from Women Food and God (by Geneen Roth) is about food – HOWEVER it’s really about ANYTHING that is standing between you and whatever you want for yourself. I can say it no better – so I’m using Geneen’s words.
She is speaking about a woman dissatisfied with her job and turning to over-eating as a way to compensate for what’s missing in her life.
It’s called “When I Get Thin (Change Jobs, Move, Find a Relationship, Leave This Relationship, Have Money) Blues”. It’s called the “If Only” refrain. It’s called postponing your life and your ability to be happy to a future date when then, oh then, you will finally get what you want and life will be good. In my books Feeding the Hungry Heart and When Food Is Love, I’ve written about the stories of people who lost weight and were still miserable. Who got what they thought they wanted most and found that joy still eluded them. Because – and yes, I know this is a cliché but it’s a cliché because it’s actually true – miserable and happy are not functions of what you have, what you look like or what you achieve. I’m not exactly proud to say that I’ve been miserable anywhere, with anything, with anyone. I’ve been miserable standing in a field of a thousand sunflowers in southern France in mid-June. I’ve been miserable weighing eighty pounds and wearing a size 0. And I’ve been happy wearing a size 18. Happy sitting with my dying father. Happy being a switchboard operator.
It’s not about the weight. It’s not about the goal. It’s not about Being Thin or Being Someone Special or Getting There. Those are fantasies in your mind – and they are all in the future, a future that never comes. Because when your goals are reached, they will be reached in the “right now”. And in the “right now,” you will still be you, doing the same things you do now. You will still stand up. Walk around. Get root canals. Open the refrigerator door. Sleep. Feel happy. Feel devastated. Feel lonely. Feel loved. Get old. Die.
But it’s not about the weight because if you keep using food as a drug, if you keep distracting yourself by creating a weight problem, then you need to attend to your weight in order to stand up, walk around, open doors, sleep, feel happy, feel devastated, feel loved, get old, die – with any degree of attention, wholeheartedness, presence. If you keep slapping another problem on top of the freshness of life itself, all you see is what you’ve slapped on to it. You cannot ignore a problem just because it’s one you’ve manufactured. Well said, Geneen!
