THE BODY WE NO LONGER COMMAND

There was a time when I danced my way into life. I kept moving long after that, but somewhere along the way, the dance disappeared.

I cannot say exactly when it happened, because the disappearance of the dance was not marked by any particular event. There was no sudden weakness, no loss of physical ability, no unmistakable change that might have made me stop and acknowledge that something unusual was happening.

On the contrary, almost everything appeared to remain as it had always been. I continued exercising, following my morning routine, maintaining my physical fitness, and performing movements that had once given me pleasure. My body was still strong enough to meet the demands I placed upon it, and I was disciplined enough not to notice how profoundly the nature of our relationship was changing.

At some point, movement, which had once arisen naturally from desire, became an obligation I continued to fulfil with admirable consistency, without ever asking myself why the joy that had accompanied even the simplest physical actions had quietly disappeared.

Perhaps this is precisely what makes such changes so difficult to recognise: we have grown accustomed to judging the condition of our bodies by what they are capable of doing, while rarely considering what it feels like to live within those abilities.

We notice when climbing a staircase becomes difficult, yet we may fail to notice that we have long since stopped climbing it with a sense of ease. A decline in endurance concerns us, whereas the disappearance of pleasure from movement is often dismissed as a lack of motivation, something to be overcome through yet another act of will.

And for someone who has always regarded the ability to overcome herself as one of her greatest strengths, it can be particularly difficult to recognise that this very ability has gradually become the only way she knows how to treat herself.

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Life presents us with countless circumstances in which we must act against our immediate desires. We fulfil obligations, endure difficult periods, make decisions that require patience, and cannot always afford to stop simply because we are tired or have lost interest.

Indeed, discipline often allows us to remain steady where desire alone would not be enough.

What interests me, however, is something else: how the temporary necessity of pushing ourselves beyond our limits can become a habit that continues to govern our lives long after the circumstances that demanded such effort have changed.

At first, we learn to disregard small discomforts because they seem insignificant compared with what we are trying to preserve. Then we become accustomed to postponing our own desires, reassuring ourselves that a more suitable moment will eventually arrive. Gradually, our inner resistance ceases to be something worth examining and becomes a kind of background noise, so familiar that we eventually stop hearing it altogether.

This does not necessarily mean that a person feels unhappy. She may remain active, successful, attentive to others, and even genuinely satisfied with certain aspects of her life.

That is why I find the conventional understanding of self-betrayal as a single dramatic decision, in which someone consciously abandons her convictions, rather inadequate.

More often, it resembles a succession of small concessions, each of which appears reasonable in isolation, yet together they gradually transform the very way we exist.

We do not always notice when we stop asking ourselves what we want, particularly when we have grown accustomed to knowing in advance that we will do whatever we believe is necessary.

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There is something paradoxical about the fact that, as we gradually lose touch with our own desires, we may become increasingly demanding of our bodies.

We continue to care for them, but care itself begins to resemble a system of constant supervision. Physical activity becomes another compulsory item on the schedule, rest becomes a prerequisite for future productivity, and pleasure becomes a desirable outcome that somehow remains persistently out of reach.

Eventually, even the attempt to relax begins to require effort.

We try to rest properly, sleep sufficiently, exercise regularly, and maintain emotional balance, as though the body were a complicated mechanism which, provided it receives adequate maintenance, should reliably deliver the quality of life we expect.

Yet the human body is not merely a collection of functions requiring attention. It is also the means through which we experience our presence in the world.

Through it, we encounter warmth, fatigue, touch, distance, rhythm, our own strength, and the possibility of moving towards whatever awakens our curiosity.

When movement gives us pleasure, we rarely question its purpose. We may suddenly quicken our pace, feel the wind against our skin, stretch after a long sleep, or begin dancing to music drifting through a neighbour’s open window, not because any of these actions is particularly beneficial, but because, in that moment, they are simply an extension of what we want.

Perhaps this is why the disappearance of pleasure from movement feels so different from the loss of physical fitness.

A person may remain perfectly capable of performing familiar actions, yet a barely perceptible distance begins to emerge between herself and her body: movement no longer happens of its own accord, because it now requires a reason, an intention, or a command.

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I have never been particularly convinced by the idea that the body possesses some infallible wisdom, capable of recognising the truth of our life choices.

The body does not know whom we should love, which relationships we ought to preserve, what work we should pursue, or when it is time to change our lives. It does not deliver moral verdicts, and illness, exhaustion, or physical tension cannot be treated as proof that someone has betrayed herself.

Such explanations strike me as not only simplistic but also deeply unfair to people living with illnesses and conditions whose causes may have nothing whatsoever to do with their psychological experiences.

Yet rejecting the notion of an all-knowing body does not mean that the circumstances of our lives have no bearing on how we feel.

Prolonged tension, insufficient recovery, and the constant need to regulate our own reactions can affect sleep, muscular tension, physical well-being, and our capacity for pleasure, although none of these experiences, taken in isolation, tells us whether our choices were right or wrong.

What interests me is not the attempt to decipher bodily sensations as secret messages, but rather how easily we become accustomed to treating them as inconveniences to be overcome.

For if we spend enough time convincing ourselves that certain feelings do not deserve our attention, it is entirely possible that we will eventually stop noticing how our physical experience of life is changing as well.

We may learn to disregard fatigue, overlook persistent tension, resist the desire to stop, and continue performing familiar actions long after they have ceased to bring us satisfaction.

And the body does not necessarily refuse to obey.

Sometimes it continues to obey for a remarkably long time.

Which is precisely what allows us to overlook what is happening.

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When I think about the ease I once possessed, I realise that I am not remembering youth, a particular weight, or the ability to perform demanding physical exercises.

What I remember is a state in which there was almost no distance between the desire to move and movement itself.

I could hear music and begin to dance without assessing my flexibility, wondering whether I looked sufficiently graceful, or questioning whether the experience served any practical purpose.

My body did not require constant attention because I did not regard it as a separate problem to be solved.

Of course, it would be mistaken to consider such ease an exclusive sign of inner well-being, or to assume that it should remain unchanged as we grow older. Our physical abilities, habits, and sensations evolve for many reasons, and not every change requires a psychological explanation.

But what concerns me is not so much the loss of a former state as the disappearance of a space in which we allow ourselves to act without needing to achieve anything.

We walk to reach a prescribed number of steps, exercise to maintain our fitness, rest to restore our capacity for work, and gradually become accustomed to evaluating even our most enjoyable activities according to their usefulness.

As a result, pleasure ceases to be a sufficient reason for doing something and increasingly becomes a reward we expect to receive for having organised our lives correctly.

Perhaps this is why the memory of dancing can sometimes be more powerful than the memory of our reflection in a mirror.

In a mirror, we see a body that can be compared, evaluated, and altered.

In dancing, for a little while, we stop observing ourselves from the outside.

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What I find particularly strange is that leaving circumstances which have demanded prolonged inner tension does not necessarily restore our former sense of ease.

We tend to imagine liberation as an event after which everything gradually returns to its rightful place: the need to accommodate others disappears, we regain control over our time, and we no longer have to persuade ourselves each day that circumstances which have long ceased to satisfy us are nevertheless reasonable.

Yet external circumstances may change far more quickly than the habits through which we have learned to treat ourselves.

A person may no longer be required to meet someone else’s expectations, yet continue imposing upon herself the demands developed over years of doing precisely that. She may have left a situation that kept her constantly tense, yet still struggle to relax, regarding every moment of free time as an empty space that ought to be filled with something useful.

Sometimes, it is only after a difficult period has ended that we begin to recognise the depth of a fatigue previously overshadowed by the necessity of managing everyday life.

This is neither an inevitable sequence of events nor a universal pattern of recovery, but the very possibility of such an experience invites us to consider the difference between the freedom we gain by changing our circumstances and the freedom we have yet to allow ourselves to feel.

Perhaps it is possible to leave a life in which we repeatedly denied our own desires, while continuing to live as though the right to pleasure must still be earned.

And then even recovery becomes another obligation.

We demand that we return to normal more quickly, regain our energy, restore our familiar routines, and become once again the person we were before the difficult period began.

But what if that former state does not return on command?

What if the body, having so faithfully carried out our instructions for so long, needs not another programme of improvement, but the possibility of no longer being subjected to constant control?

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It seems to me that this is where one of the most delicate distinctions lies: the difference between caring for ourselves and being accustomed to overcoming ourselves.

Discipline is not inherently a form of violence, nor does physical activity become coercion simply because it sometimes requires effort. We do not always feel like exercising before a workout, and pleasure often arrives only after we have begun to move.

But there is a difference between choosing to do something beneficial despite a temporary reluctance and reaching a point where we have almost lost the ability to choose any other way of treating ourselves.

If every sign of fatigue is interpreted as weakness, every desire to stop as a failure of character, and every absence of pleasure as yet another problem demanding immediate correction, even the most sensible habits may gradually lose their original meaning.

We continue performing actions we once chose for the sake of our well-being, while increasingly neglecting to ask whether they still hold the same meaning for us.

Perhaps this is why rediscovering pleasure in movement does not always depend on increasing physical activity, finding new exercises, or attempting to restore abilities we believe we have lost.

Sometimes what matters more is recovering the ability to distinguish between movement we choose and movement we perform simply because we have grown accustomed to demanding it of ourselves.

This does not mean abandoning discipline or waiting indefinitely for desire to arise. Rather, it means learning once again to recognise our own condition and take it into account, without treating every departure from our established routine as another reason for dissatisfaction with ourselves.

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When we speak of remaining true to ourselves, we usually think of decisions that can be clearly identified: refusing what is unacceptable, defending our boundaries, changing our circumstances, or ceasing to live according to other people’s expectations.

Yet I increasingly suspect that there is another, quieter form of being true to ourselves, one that reveals itself not in our ability to make significant decisions, but in the way we continue to live after those decisions have already been made.

We may learn to say no to other people while still refusing ourselves permission to stop.

We may free ourselves from the need to satisfy someone else’s expectations while preserving demands of our own that are no less severe or unquestionable.

We may transform every external aspect of our lives and still treat our bodies as obedient servants, expected to deliver the required results without complaint.

Perhaps this is why freedom does not always begin where the circumstances that once constrained us come to an end.

Sometimes it begins much later, when we first recognise that we are no longer obliged to treat ourselves in the way we once did.

And this recognition does not necessarily arrive with joy or immediate relief, because the habit of demanding constant composure from ourselves may prove far more enduring than the circumstances that originally made it necessary.

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I do not know whether it is possible to recover the dance I once knew, and I am increasingly uncertain that this is what I should be trying to do.

Over the years, our bodies change, our experiences accumulate, our understanding of ourselves evolves, and even the reasons behind our decisions become different. The desire to reproduce a former state exactly as it was may therefore become yet another attempt to subject the present to the demands of the past.

Perhaps what matters more than recovering our former ease is discovering that our relationship with our bodies can be different altogether.

That movement need not serve as proof of our discipline, and rest need not be earned through exhaustion.

That pleasure does not always arrive as a reward for something properly accomplished, nor does it have to justify its existence by being useful.

And that sometimes we may simply allow ourselves to move because we want to, without first determining how well we are likely to do it.

There was a time when I danced my way into life, never imagining that one day movement might remain while the dance itself disappeared.

I understand now that the ability to perform familiar actions does not necessarily mean that we still find pleasure in performing them, and that even the healthiest habits cannot replace the feeling of being inwardly at peace with what we do.

I have no wish to turn the return of that feeling into another task to be completed by a particular date.

I do not know when I will feel like dancing again, and I have no intention of demanding that the desire appear.

But if one day I hear music and feel the impulse to move, I would like to leave that simple moment undisturbed by the familiar questions of usefulness, achievement, and physical ability.

Perhaps then the dance will truly return — not as proof that I have overcome my past, nor as evidence of some final and complete recovery, but simply as movement that no longer needs to be commanded.