Obesity: A “Life form”?

Posted by: adonis49 on: October 1, 2010

• In: Book Review | Essays | health/medicine | short stories/novellas | social articles | war aftermath
• 1 Comment

You think that you are adult and finally decided to leave home without a proper education.  You want to investigate the world and feel aware of your potentials, courage, and determination to have a life of your own.  You are hitch hiking to the East, to the West as Kerouac did over half a century ago.  You meet people on the way who shared your longing; and you experiment with all kinds of drugs since you are in the experimentation mood.  Eventually, once you reach the western ocean where the weather is always hot then you discover that the homeless experiment is feasible: sleeping outside under a clear sky, near the beach, watching people passing by…  Then hunger sets in and the challenge of getting fed becomes acute because people are fed up of dolling out to outstretched dirty hands.

Waking up one morning in a ditch, awareness that you reached bottom posts in front of your spirit three alternatives:

First, you may try to change and apply to jobs.  This is not an easy decision:  You have to get a shower, shave your beard, find decent cloths, find an affordable facility to write and print your altered CV with catchy professional exposures.  Trouble is:  You don’t have a base to start with to keep up the cleansing, washing, and pressed cloths for the duration of job application process.

Second, you fall back to your parents and impose your presence.  They might purchase a computer and connect you to internet in order to get you out of their legs.  You get installed in front of this fast communication facility and view the world unfolding in front of you.  By the by, you are eating abundant quantity of junk food without realizing it and you gained a lot of weight.  One day you shave your extended beard and discover that the mirror is reflecting three chins and no neck.  Your mouth shrank relative to your bloated face.  Your eyes are just two dots surrounded by masses of flesh.  You are now addicted to eating; an addiction worse than opium, heroine, cocaine, or nicotine.  You gave up trying to diet:  This is an impossible mission.  You can no longer walk any distance:  Your heart has more urgent task to do than indulging aiding you stepping out.  People will no facilitate venturing out to the limelight:  You are a tar to the svelte community.  You decide to move to the basement and have your parents bring you food at your door step and you call the pizzeria to deliver.  A life form.

Third alternative, you enroll in the military.  Your country has always a couple of wars going on simultaneously and Uncle Sam wants you.  Free food aplenty; and they know exactly why you joined the army.  You are another mercenary with a petty goal of eating, getting paid, obtaining residency, or all the above.  You are sent to Iraq first.  You are killing innocent people (collateral damages?) and are traumatized.  You are the kind of sensitive person and your conscience is disturbing you.  You fall back swallowing huge amount of food to appeasing your ethical and moral standards.  You try to vomit what you regurgitated but fail.  Your stomach is aching continuously its skin is dilating to amazing proportions.

You are gaining about 25 pounds a year and are advanced to the front line; not because you are a valuable and trained soldier but you are an ideal shield for the skinnier soldiers moving behind you.  The army would love that you are “killed in action” instead of degrading the image of the army when you are repatriated.  For example these kinds of comments: “Are you fighting or spending time eating?”; “How are we to win if overweight soldiers are running the show?”; “McDonald must be making a fortune in Iraq”; “Now I can figure out why we witnessed this terrible financial crash”.

This pathology of becoming very much overweighted (much over 200 pounds) is endemic in the overseas divisions in war action.  This is no longer opium addiction or venereal diseases:  This is a worse terrible addiction that is shaming the image of a supposedly a young and svelte army.  The best trained and discipled war machine that can live on little and withstand moral atrocities.  The dailies are reluctant to cover that shameful pathology increasing exponentially.  Life forms cannot make headlines.

You are encouraged to read “A Life Form” by Amelie Nothomb.

Tags: adonis49, amelie nothomb, books, humor, iraq, Kerouac, killed in action, Life form, obesity, writing