the May experiment….join me?

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I don’t diet.  But I read that we each gain about a pound and a half a year (mostly due to holiday scarfing).  At that rate I’ll be a giant boulder by the time I hit the end.  So I’m going to initiate the May experiment.  Here are my rules:

  1. don’t get on the scale
  2. eat well and enough and definitely not too much.  skip the stuff that isn’t necessary
  3. exercise every day.  if not yoga or the gym, then take a walk
  4. go outside every day.  walking to the car doesn’t count.
  5. drink lots of water
  6. get enough sleep.  at least most of the time.
  7. on May 31st, if so motivated, get on the scale and see if the scale thinks anything is different.  more importantly, see if the people around me think anything is different.

This isn’t about dieting.  It’s about taking care of myself the way I know I should be every day.  I just want to see if it’s possible for me to be this conscious for a month.  Who knows….at the end of May I might decide I like this way better.  We’ll see.  Let me know if you want to try it with me.

2. Genesis: Va Yiggash & Va Yehi

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I just learned that christ means messiah.  Interesting.  Always thought it was just a name.

So I know it’s time to write on the first chapter of Exodus, but I still have a piece of Genesis stuck in my head.  The death thing.

Before Jacob dies, he has all of his children brought to him and he speaks to each one.  Actually only his sons come before him.  I wonder what happened to Dinah?  I guess maybe she left her family when she married.  In those days it wasn’t like you could come home for the weekend because dear old dad was dying.  No phones or trains.

Jacob isn’t entirely kind when he speaks to his sons, and it would take more of a Torah scholar than me to decipher half of what he’s talking about.  But what I do get is that he spoke to each son before he died.  There is huge blessing in that.  How amazing to have that one final conversation with someone.  Knowing that in fact this is the final conversation.

Three of my closest family members have died.  I did not get to have a conversation with any of them before they died.  It would have been wonderful.  One of my dearest friends died a few years ago.  I didn’t get to speak to him before he died either as his death was sudden.  He was a bit of a hobo though.  He never really lived anywhere so always kept a phone number with voicemail.  It took the phone company several months to figure out that no one was ever going to pay the bill before they finally turned it off.  So I spoke to Alex quite regularly on the phone after he died.  Often I yelled at him, as there was really no reason for him to die other than absolute degraded neglect of his own well being.  It was wonderful to be able to hear his voice and pretend for a moment that we really could have that final conversation.

Maybe the lesson is that we should treat every moment like it could be the last.  Not in a pessimistic end of the world kind of way.  In a be good to yourself and the people around you kind of way.  That’s what they say at the end of my yoga class.