To Scale

January 9, 2015
Day 254

I see it everywhere: the whole world wants everything "to scale".  If something's pictured larger or smaller than it really is on a package, you better have "Not shown actual size" captioned next to it, or trust me: there will be trouble!

So when I step on the scale at home, as I did again today, I wonder what actual size I'm supposed to be.  I don't mean the fashion magazines' norm, or even according to the national health standards.  I know my body better than anyone else who will ever exist, so I already know what "to scale" means for me.

As I stepped on the scale this morning, it didn't tell me I was too fat.  It just told me my weight.  It left the judgment up to me, and whether I like it or not, to the rest of the world, too.  The scale made no funny faces.  It didn't mock me, or call me names.  It didn't even plaster on a fake smile or give me a sympathetic shrug.  It just gave me a number.  As I expected, the number was high.  As I did not expect, it was higher than the high number I guessed it might be.

Still, I did not cry.  I just prayed, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change".  I knew that in the moment I stood there on the scale, I could not change what the scale told me.  I couldn't blow my nose, clip my nails, or cut my hair off to achieve some dramatic difference.  All I could do was take note of the number, and accept what I could not change in the moment.

We live in a world of scale.  Scales of justice, scales of weight--hell, even scales of fish.  Everything is understood "to scale".  When we're overweight, we're said to tip the scales, as if we're practically knocking something over.  "Whoa!  Don't tip over my display, fatty!"  But if you think about it, the scale starts with, quite literally, nothing at all.  Without me and my body mass, my scale is absolutely nothing, a zero.  I'm the one who gives it a number.  I'm the one who defines it. 

I will get healthy, and I will lose weight, but I'll do so while remembering that the person I really am is already in perfect scale to the person I already am.