bending down, over time
As a child, I used to sit hunched down over my lego. Lego was my childhood, and childhood is lego to me. I'm still precious about my trophies, and perhaps I should be, as every Christmas, every birthday, until the age of perhaps 11, lego is what I wanted, and lego was what I got. My lego was stored in a treasure chest, both literally and metaphorically.
I'd have my feet tightly together as I squatted over the lego, my arms rotating around my body to pick up pieces. I'd walk like a rumpnisse with their disproportionately large feet to my now short legs, a few centimeters for each step.
I'd move around, into and out of the sheet on the floor, where all my lego was spread. I'd sit this way for hours, effectively balancing my body on my ankles and my knees fully bent. Heavy lego weeks, which was common right after my parents big midsummer parties, I'd spend all my time over the blanket, building.
I normally wasn't building anything special, nothing revolutionary... with moving parts. It was mostly walls and rooms and some trinkets, maybe a trap here and there based on ideas I'd stolen from models. I would rarely play with models, but I did cherish the parts that belonged to my most precious ones.
I started noticing, a few years ago, that I no longer wanted to bend down to pick something up. It was just a switch in my behaviour. If I'm picking something up, I'll align myself and the things I'm picking up, so that I don't have to get my body up and down needlessly. It may sound silly, but I don't quite know why.
It doesn't hurt, I can do the repetition hundreds if not thousands of times. Sure, sometimes my back feels awfully tired, but I rather sit down than bend down to do things.
And I'm 33. I'm not particularly bothered by it, but perhaps once a month it crosses my mind that I have changed. And I have. It feels like I'm getting old.
Or perhaps more accurately, this is how I'm becoming old, by giving in to very tiny bits of bodily feedback, telling me something is wrong. It isn't telling me to stop though, is it? Perhaps I should double down on this all, and really make bending down my life goal. So that I can live healthier, possibly longer.
Well, as this has been at the forefront of my mind, and because I've done a fair amount of gardening and golf, I am starting to feel my back. And when my back is tired, it doesn't want to hold my body up, every moment I'm not lying down or slouching requires mental effort, and the back just wants to let go of my whole upper body, into one big heap. Perhaps there's wisdom in my body. Wisdom I'm slow to use in any meaningful way.