There's a website I go to that's got several message boards related to weight loss surgeries of various kinds. Plenty of the people who post there have enough spare time on their hands to keep the place lively. And, because they spend so much time at the site, threads that are more personal than informational spring up in abundance.

Recently, one caught my eye and though I didn't reply, it both gave me pause and something to ponder. It was started by a man who is a NYC firefighter and military veteran. He worked at the rubble field where the WTC used to be. He fought in Desert Storm. He's no stranger to witness trauma. I think this may have quite a lot to do with why he wrote what he did.

A significant percentage of the people who read and post at that site are deep in their process: some using the healing crisis to mature, grow, become empowered; others using it as evidence of their consisten victimhood. It can be heart-breaking and irritating to read words written by people who have no sense of their own power or accountability; often it's both.

The thread in question boiled down to the following piece of advice: Stick to your post-op instructions for the sake of those who died on 9/11/2001. The thread was pages long and filled with posts of fervent agreement. The people who died on that die were canonized for their sacrifice.

My immediate response was to recoil and not just because it smacked of the "think of the starving Armenians" exhortations of my mother when I turned my nose up at various offerings--brussels sprouts, ham loaf, Aunt Alice's renowned zucchini/cheddar/tomato/bacon casserole, etc. That was part of it, to be sure, but the overriding feeling I had was sad, fascinated horror.

My mind teemed with pithy responses intended to shake some sense into the posters and readers. I paused, took some deep breaths, and remembered that a post like the one I had in mind would not succeed. Instead, I would be rounded upon and chastised. Invested egos blazing, certain among them would label me insensitive, un-American, and clueless. Some people might validate my words, to be sure, but they would represent a tiny minority voice.

So, instead, I've had the ideas rattling around in my head for more than a week and have concluded that some form of regurgitation is necessary if I'm to be rid of them. Here goes...

I think my job is to be the best me I can be as a way to live a great THANK YOU to the creative force(s) responsible for my existence and to make myself was capable as possible to attend to the business of supporting and assisting others in their own journeys.

If I were to contemplate doing right by myself in honor of dead people, why limit it to the victims of 9/11/2001? Why not live well for those who died during the Children's Crusade, who have perished from AIDS, who've been killed by vipers, who've died at the hands of loved ones, who had first names that began with the letter T, whose lives were taken by natural events? What makes the lives of the people killed on that particular date through the acts of those particular men more worthy?

I'm not hard-hearted--I have my own roster of grief attached to that day of that year in this country--but I am sickened by the lazy emotional act of turning those events and those people into symbols of collective guilt. Doing so devalues their lives and our own. Nuclear families are still living the reality of the terrorist's attacks in vivid relief. Iraqi families are living the aftermath.

My MIDBand hasn't got a thing to do with horrible events of that day. Nor does my health. To impose my self on them would require a level of perversion that I hope remains beyond my grasp.

Why not treat myself and my body well because they are precious to me? Why not strive for the benefit of my own health because I'm grateful for the blessing of my body? Why not live my life as though it has some inherent worth?

Why not?

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