I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the perception of the body as a functional tool rather than a source of identity or deeper significance.
Margaret Atwood's quote invites us to reconsider our relationship with our bodies, often viewing them merely as instruments for pleasure or tools for achieving our desires. This perspective can limit our understanding of the body, reducing it to a mere vehicle for our will, rather than a complex entity deserving of respect and recognition for its own intrinsic value and agency.
In practice
In a discussion about body positivity, this quote can be used to highlight the need for a deeper understanding of our bodies.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
The phrase "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others.
The problem with introspection is that it has no end.
The priest is not made. He must be born a priest; must inherit his office. I refer to the new birth-the birth of water and the Spirit. Thus all Christians must became priests, children of God and co-heirs with Christ the Most High Priest.
Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.
I love to talk about cooking and recipes, but I love as much talking about how food and cooking can change the world.
Whoso will pray, he must fast and be clean, And fat his soul, and make his body lean.
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