You will receive a Body.

You may remember that recently I had a good clean out of my teaching resources. Well along the way I came across my Rules for being Human handout. I cannot give you a reference for the writer of these rules. I understand they come from ancient Sanskrit wisdom. They were part of my resources when teaching an ethics class at a Catholic secondary school for girls. But they are brilliant and for many years were a laminated poster on the wall of all my classrooms. There are 10 of them and for my next 10 posts I will share one with you.

The introduction states, The rules for being human are those insightful and practical propositions that we as human beings, are willing to embrace to give our life more meaning and goodness towards each other. So if you think that sounds like something you are interested in; read on.

Rule No.1 You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for as long as you live. How you take care of it or fail to take care of it can make an enormous difference in the quality of your life.

So yes, we all have a body, it is the physical house for our bigger self, our spirit self and as such is important and needs to be cared for and nurtured. When we are young we can do all sorts of things that might stress and / or abuse our bodies and when we are young mostly our body will bounce back quickly. It is the most wonderful thing to be young. But the body has a memory and my observation is that it repays us for the care or neglect of the present time about 15 years down the track.

Love your body. It is the only one you will get and yes it will be imperfect; all of life is imperfect, but it is still beautiful. Do learn to take care of it and make the most of your spectacular self.