Do I have to?
I said as I pulled on my ugly new mac and stropped out of the house.
I’d asked my mum for the Scott and Fox unisex puffer jacket that all the cool people at school had,
But instead she’d taken me to Millets and bought me what was effectively a fisherman’s yellow mac
Practical, sure.
Fashionable, certainly not.

As Katherine Ryan reminds us,
In those days it was all about being the same as everyone else,
Having hair coloured skin and skin coloured hair,
And certainly not wearing a fisherman’s coat into form class.

Of course,
I didn’t actually hate it until I got to school and realised it was uncool,
Before then I’d quite liked the juxtaposition of the yellow against the black rubber,
The freedom the loose fit gave me to breathe in without sucking in,
Unlike like the rest of my overly provocative school clothes.

Anyway,
You’re not here to picture my awkward youth,
Let’s come back to that leading opener,
I stormed out screaming,
Do I have to?

What I wish someone had told me back then was this.
No.
No you don’t have to wear it.
You can choose to be dry or you can choose to freeze your tits off.
You can choose to be boring and fit in or you can choose to be yourself.

Would I have made the right choice?
Absolutely not,
I’d have let my a-cup (which was finally growing thanks to the unnecessary birth control pill that all the girls told me to go on) freeze to the ground,
And continued to iron my curls and be a mean girl so I could just fit in,
But I would have learned.

Someone asked me recently,
Do I have to track calories?
And I said to her,
In this choice you get to make to restrict your food intake,
Do you have to track it in your phone?
Of course not.

And I get it all the time.
Do I have to take creatine?
Do I have to weight train?
Do I have to do 8000 steps a day?

Do we have any idea how lucky we are anymore?

Every decision you make for your health is a choice,
It might not always feel like it,
If you’ve seen the TikTik of the girl ‘going for a stupid walk for her stupid mental health’,
You’ll understand the vibe here.

Do you have to do any of these things?
No,
But do you get to?
Sure.

Gosh,
How lucky you are.

Let’s take a moment as you finish this email,
Well done for getting through the mac drama better than I did,
To run through our gratitude for the choices we get to make.

How lucky we are to have a choice to reduce our food abundance,
Or indeed,
Have access to eat more of what we need.

How lucky those of us in able-bodies are,
To be able to weight train without pain,
Take a walk in the pissing rain in an ugly mac without fear of walking alone,
Well,
Unless you’re a woman and it’s after dark.

How cool is it?
That every day we get to make choices that align with our goals,
We get to eat how we choose and exercise in a way that feels good,
Can choose to eat an array of colourful veggies and fruit,
We literally get to make decisions every day to improve our quality of life.
We don’t have to do anything.

I know you’re trying to think of an exception right now,
But I guarantee you that exception dates back to a choice,
A choice you got to make before today.

Framing our actions as ‘wants’ rather than ‘needs’ is an evidence-based way to improve our likelihood of doing them,
Makes for a much happier life,
A more grateful, wholesome way of being,
A calmness in the mac, if you will.