Mind Over Matter Is Bullshit

Cramps woke me up early this morning. I tiptoed out of the bedroom and heated up water in the orange kettle, then poured it into the red hot water bottle my mom gave me for Christmas 2017. It was the last time I saw her and her last gift to me. In those five years since, the eight of us have worn out the water bottle during illnesses and period cramps and upset stomachs and feeling cold and needing comfort. I sat in the stillness of the quiet house, sipping from my sister’s mug, staring out at the snow, watching the steam rise from my coffee.

My mother and my sister, their hot water bottle and coffee mug, warming me from the outside in and inside out.

It struck me, because we usually hear it the other way around: “Mind over matter. If your body wants to quit, teach your brain to override your body and keep going.” I always hated that bullshit. The idea that torturing ourselves is somehow noble disgusts me. And also, it makes no fucking sense. Our brains ARE part of our bodies. Our mind or consciousness is a projection of our brains. No brain, no mind. No brain, no consciousness.

For so long, I lived in my head, intellectualizing everything and pretending my body was an annoying appendage to my brain. When I first started writing, I was writing from my head. Over the last two weeks of not writing, I’ve done other work, internal work, so I can write from my gut, too. It’s not a competition (the brain and gut are intimately connected anyway), but I have always skewed heavily toward my brain and ignored my gut. No more.

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