The other day I was thinking:
I am Brooks by government name.
But my skin isn’t Brooks.
My bones aren’t Brooks.
My organs aren’t Brooks.
My brain isn’t even Brooks.
They are the system carrying Brooks.
We always hear, “Treat your body like a temple,” but I started thinking about it differently. What if I stopped looking at my body as me and started looking at it as this incredible system I was given—a system working every second of every day, hopefully for as long as possible, to keep me here?
Because your system is working HARD for you.
In my head, it goes something like this:
Your heart doesn’t know you got dumped.
Your kidneys don’t know somebody hurt your feelings.
Your liver doesn’t know you had a shitty day.
Your nervous system doesn’t understand that somebody pissed you off at work.
It’s just sitting there like:
Bitch, I am on overdrive keeping you alive. What did I do?
And somehow, that thought makes me want to be kinder to it.
We talk about “self-care,” and sometimes self-care gets turned into, “I had a terrible day, so I deserve to eat whatever I want, drink whatever I want, stay up all night, and do whatever makes me feel better for five minutes.”
But in that picture, your system didn’t have the terrible day.
You did.
Why punish the thing that’s trying to carry you through it?
Maybe care means asking:
What can I give my system that makes its job easier?
What plants can I eat?
What nutrients does it need?
Does it need water?
Movement?
Sleep?
Sunlight?
Music?
Quiet?
A freaking dance party?
What would happen if, instead of constantly demanding more from our bodies, we started working with them?
Because nobody likes a hard job, and I genuinely cannot imagine a harder job than being responsible for one entire human body.
Think about how much shit is happening in there.
All. Day. Long.
And nobody is clocking out.
Your heart can’t say, “Okay, Brooks, I’m taking PTO today.”
Everything is interconnected, too. I think about all the parts depending on one another: the brain needing nutrients and rest, the muscles needing fuel, the nervous system needing opportunities to settle. A whole system constantly communicating with itself.
So maybe loving yourself can also mean loving the machinery carrying you.
And sometimes, maybe we need to physically shake some shit off.
Literally.
Shake.
Dance.
Put on music.
Move your body.
I think about animals shaking and moving, and sometimes I think we humans need to remember that we are animals, too. We have these ancient biological systems trying to function inside a world that has technologically evolved unbelievably fast.
Our phones evolved faster than our nervous systems did.
The outside world is LOUD.
So sometimes I think we need to stop, come back inside, and ask:
How is my system doing?
Not: How do I look?
Not: What does everybody think about me?
Not: What happened on Instagram today?
How is the system?
What does it need?
What can I do today to make its job just a little bit easier?
Because this system supports me every second I am alive.
I will never be able to repay it equally.
But I can participate.
I can honor it.
I can nourish it.
I can move it.
I can rest it.
I can listen to it.
I can stop intentionally making its job harder just because something outside of it hurt me.
I can support the system that supports me.
And I think that’s a beautiful way to look at being alive.
Boom.
And with that profound realization about honoring and protecting my miraculous human system…
I have arrived at the tanning salon.
Where I am about to walk into a spray-tan booth and breathe God knows what while voluntarily shocking the shit out of the very system I just spent this entire drive talking about protecting.
So.
There’s that.
Oh well.
It’s Earth.
