The Heavy Metaphor of the Weighing Scale

I have had bad electronic karma these past few months. The background score to this tragedy has been the quiet sighs of the various electronic gadgets in my life, giving up their ghosts one by one. It all started with our weighing scale, one of those friends that believes in telling the harsh truth, ‘for your good’, going to its maker earlier this year. Not the manufacturer maker, I mean the big guy up in the sky. My elderly and doddering Fitbit joined the weighing scale in the electrical afterlife. Our microwave oven has been its on its last legs for several months, having developed a high-pitched wheeze in protest of any kind of labor. The washing machine which has been similarly rusting and ailing, finally kicked the (detergent filled) bucket.

All these gadgets are well beyond their warranty period and their demise did not come as a surprise. However, when my new laptop, which I sold a half-a-kidney last year to buy, crashed the day its rather short warranty expired, and I spent several frustrating and fruitless hours on the phone with the completely useless IVR customer service and their even less helpful human counterparts, I wrote off 2022. Like we did 2021 and 2020 for other more serious virulent reasons.

Don’t lose patience with me, dear Reader. I narrate that rather long introduction and saga of electronic items headed for the landfill with a certain objective in mind. For which I could have just stuck with the weighing scale* conking off.

*Normal programming and reading interrupted for a critical announcement for all readers. The weighing scale is a metaphor. A rather heavy one at that.

You see, while I have steadily gained weight (and with decreasing frequency lost some of it) over the years, it was only with the introduction of the scale into my life that I made my weight the barometer of all my successes. I also determined my happiness based on where I stood on the scale.  The higher the number, the heavier my heart and the more I wanted to emblazon the capital L on my forehead. If you are familiar with the self-perception theory (people draw inferences about who they are, by observing their own behaviour), I drew inferences about who I was based on how much I weigh.

With this harsh messenger of truth bowing out my life, there have been a few curious changes. I flailed, in the early days, to find markers to the success (or the lack of it) of my efforts. But I gradually moved from being anchorless to being released from the tyranny of the daily carefully measured proof of my failure. No longer being able to weigh my progress into doom, a load seemed to have been lifted off my heart and mind.  What couldn’t be measured could be safely ignored. I could finally eat all the ice-cream straight from the tub based solely on mood and sloth levels, with nary a thought for the consequences.

You know where this story is headed? Straight to the doctor’s office, of course. I checked in for an allergy and as a caretaker for the entire family, who have managed to successfully catch every virus floating around – with me being mysteriously disease-free despite being the certified hypochondriac. The attending nurse weighed me, and I was taken aback at the blatant lies that the scale spewed. I argued the nurse down a couple of kilos, zero error being the one concept I remember from my school science classes. But the fact of the matter was – the anarchy of a world without measures could not continue.

I do not want to submit to the dictatorial digits of the scale again. I need something which shouts new technology and progress. Something that allows me to break free from the fetters of the tried and tested. I have hence settled for an upgraded Fitbit and changing the batteries on my blood pressure machine. I am now obsessing over resting heart rate (by all accounts, abysmal) and my sleep score (ditto). I am considering ‘hacking my body’ via the glucose monitor wearable that the Instagram logarithm has been urging me to buy. Safe with the rudder of numbers, I am luxuriating in the fact that even though my body and health are going to hell in a handbasket, it is at the least a very measured journey.