Virginity Is for Ninnies

It is so quiet on this page. And the world is so loud. But that fever pitch is not who I am and it is not who you are meant to be, either. Today was a very loud day without rest or quality time with my kids or exercise. I don't like these days. And when they are over it is nearly impossible for me to turn down the volume, to stop the buzz of productivity and be still.

I thought today about our bodies, how temporarily we have them, and how essential it is that we enjoy them. Sometimes, when nothing is hurting, I will sit in my body and think solely about the pleasure of existing here, in this physical form, fully at peace because I know that a pain-free existence is temporary. Old age and aching joints and things not working quite the way we are used to is an inevitability. And so I sit in this body and I relish the way it works and moves, the food it digests, its ability to carry me over miles and miles and--somehow--elicit joy in the pain of feats of endurance and physicality. It is a cliche, but this form is the greatest tool given us. 

I often think about machines and robots and the mechanical creations of mankind in comparison with our physical bodies. When a Honda goes twenty years with minimal maintenance associated and then finally goes caput, we remark at the remarkable engineering. And yet, we sit in these bodies with bloody ball-and-socket joints and brains that allow us to communicate with absurd complexity and we have skin THAT REJUVENATES nearly imperceptibly when injured. Our liver can heal itself through catastrophic amounts of damage and a female body can produce another human being without the mother even having to think through a single component of cellular meiosis. These bodies are raw wonder. This is the magic we sometimes forget to see, isn't it?

When I was younger, I was afraid of my body. Because I grew up in a Catholic home, attended Sunday school, and did not miss weekly mass for the first sixteen years of my life, sex was discussed in the fairly caged way of relatively conservative Catholicism; virginity was to be cherished and sex was largely for reproduction and acts like masturbation or sexual exploration, though not addressed directly, were shoved into a gray zone where it did not require much imagination to believe participating in these acts would be sinful. And it was these subtle and subdued messages that led me to feel very guilty and very fearful of my body and of the desires programmed into my very existence as a result of being a human being with a body on planet Earth.

What a pity for me and for generations of others who explored far too late (and puritanically) the multi-faceted physical ways our bodies offer pleasure; the way your skin sings when it is in full contact with another person's, the full-body warmth elicited from a kiss delayed too long, the pleasure of learning to play your own body as a master does his instrument. What a pity I spent any time at all feeling guilty or concerned that my deep connection with my body was an act against a God (who I now believe with certainty, if it is that there is a solitary deity, would also relish in the pleasure of seeing us utilize these amazing tools in every way they are capable). 

Make no mistake that we must use these vessels in every possible way while we have time; we must relish in the comfort of a body at rest, pain free, existing in a sublime state of peace. We must seek out the company of partners who help us discover the pleasure of this physical form, be it an extended hug on a day when the world is melting and we can barely hold it together or the touch of a lover whose every movement is dedicated to providing this body with deep and undeniable ecstasy.

Throw out the puritanical and the ways your body scares you and live fully in this machine you have been given. Live, live, live, live, live! Do it now. Do it tomorrow. Do it before it is too late. You (and your body!) are a miracle. Today is the last day this body will ever be as young as it is now. So go out, push the lengths of its endurance and test its ability to sew pleasure. You get, as far as I know, just this one opportunity to live fully and without guilt and with a conscious mind about the infinite ways this body is valhalla.

Your charge today: live deeply and fully in this vessel. Cherish it. Pleasure it. And, above all, marvel at the infinite ways it exists to serve you. We are, after all, the clearest evidence that magic is not some intangible to be found only in literature; the very breath you exhale in this moment, the oxidation of your tissues, and the harmony that exists in each atom in your body is the most authentic evidence humanity has that miracles are commonplace; you, my dearest, you are a precious and irreproducible work of art.