Can an unreasonable body be a space of possibility?

I’m slowly absorbing the audiobook of Kate Manne’s latest: Unshrinking. It feels like essential reading for anyone with a body, thin, fat or anywhere in between. Toward the end of chapter six is this call to arms:

And we are among those who know the most about certain facets of the human condition. For example, we can help dispel the fantasy that bodies are reasonable — by which I mean subject to rational control and capable of being wrestled into submission via that suspect thing called mastery.

For bodies are not reasonable. They bend, they sag, they break. They get fat. They get old. They get ill. They become disabled. They die, ultimately, and we die with them. That is, of course, frightening. (“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?” in the words of Mary Oliver.)

But our bodies are ourselves, as the feminist slogan has it. We are not separate from our bodies …. Then we will have to learn to live with, and in, our physical selves in all of their glorious and infuriating vulnerability and intransigence.

A few hours later I listened to Kate Bowler’s podcast Everything Happens where she talked with Maggie Jackson author of Uncertain: The wisdom of wonder and being unsure. Jackson introduces the idea of ‘breaking the inertia of your certainty’.

Living with a fluctuating chronic illness like ME/CFS or migraine or fibromyalgia or POTS (or all four) is pretty good for breaking certainty, and so is a breaking your arm or spraining your ankle or an untimely bout of stomach flu or food poisoning!

Routine experts become excellent at applying solutions to recognisable problems. Or as a dentist I met once said, “You could probably train a monkey to do most of what I do… but its taken me over a decade to learn when to do what I do.” Most people are routine experts of their bodies, at least while they are fortunate enough to be young and ‘healthy’.

It strikes me that much of the advice we receive around health comes from people extending their routine expertise in their own body or of the bodies they call ‘normal’ onto everyone. This means every body which doesn’t fit their routine expertise is automatically recategorised into ab-normal.

Jackson then introduced me to the new category of ‘adaptive experts’, who are unlike ‘routine experts’.

“who break the inertia of their knowing in order to gain greater ends. …these experts actually spend more time assessing a new, messy problem than even novices do. What they’re doing is using that playfulness and entering the space of uncertainty, and exploring. One roboticist told me ‘uncertainty is a space of possibility’.

I confess I often experience uncertainty as a place of discomfort and anxiety. Especially bodily uncertainty, the great ‘will I or won’t I be able to do x today’? Let alone the wider questions of ‘will I or won’t I be able to return to part time work?’, ‘will anyone hire me if I disclose my disability?’, ‘will I be able to access a disability pension if I need one?’, or ‘will I or won’t I ever get any better?’ is a fraught space.

The roboticist reminds me that I am already an adaptive expert. I had a flash of insight about all the adaptations I have already made to live within my body’s energy envelope. Accepting that routine is impossible, adaptation becomes possible, even imperative, I apply my curiosity and imagination to my body as-it-is and my world opens up wonderfully.

Now imagine what I - or someone like me - could do as a coach or consultant?

Thank you for reading, your time and attention are a gift!

• Can you identify something you’re a ‘routine expert’ in? It might be maintaining your bike, or doing a housework task, or it might be a process you do at work?

• Have you ever tried to solve a problem where you applied every strategy you know (or can find with a google) and it still won’t work? Did you come up with a novel solution? How frustrating did you find it? How long did it take until you found a way around it or just gave up?

• Do you have a situation or circumstance in your health, workplace or in your life generally, where you need some adaptive expert thinking?

Share your answers and come join the discussion with our community of discerning readers…

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