Moral weight

I'm reading this book right now - Big Brother. It was slow getting started (to me) but wow, it has made me think a LOT. In the book, a woman who lives with her husband and his two teenage children has a brother come for a lengthy visit.

The woman was once a caterer and is now a successful business owner, making pull-string dolls. Her family lives comfortably off the money she makes; money not made by any massive ambition but rather, mostly luck. She loves to cook and resents the health and fitness freak side of her husband, often taking it as an affront to her own 20-pound weight gain as well as her culinary expertise.

Enter the brother. Edison is a jazz musician who is between homes, and between gigs. Her husband is not happy that he's coming for an extended visit, and unhappier still when Edison shows up as an obese person nobody recognizes. He finally snaps and unloads on Edison, in front of the whole family. And Edison's response is that his weight is not a character flaw. He (rightly) points out that he's not a pedophile or thief or murderer.

That scene made me think a lot. I myself am overweight, and it's relatively new. I'm 42, and was fairly thin my whole life til my mid 30s (I am about 30-40 pounds heavier now than I was then, depending on the year). I can attribute this to a lot of things, but I've always felt it boils down to a lack of self control. I eat and drink too much, and don't move enough. Pretty simple. But I have often thought of it as a character flaw; after all, gluttony is a "sin," right? A lack of self discipline over something that seems like it should be simple almost seems juvenile.

Even so, the one thing Edison got wrong was that his being overweight didn't hurt anyone but himself. It hurt his sister to see him clearly not himself (at least, not the "himself" that she had known her whole life to this point). It hurt his brother-in-law because his immense appetite made messes in their home and left a dent in their budget. His weight broke a beloved, unique chair that his brother-in-law had made himself. And, if left long enough to cause health problems, it would cause both his sister and niece (both who loved him and enjoyed his company) immense emotional pain.

Of course obesity is not on the scale of jailable offenses. But to say it's a harmless thing gets it a bit wrong too. I don't know that my weight issues extend to the point of a "sin" because so far I can't see that it has a measurable effect on anyone else in my life. And to be fair, we all have some character flaws - to look at a man with 200 extra pounds and say he is worth less because of it, while being ok that our best friend regularly cheats on his wife...that is hypocritical. We all fall short, just in different ways.

So when I look at others who are very, very overweight, and see their bodies and not their personhood...it's just wrong. And clearly I am not in a position to judge, because I'm overweight too - just by a different degree.

Gonna be thinking about this one for awhile.