Editor’s Be aware: Is something ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Each Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Inform him about your lifelong or in-the-moment issues at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
Don’t need to miss a single column? Enroll to get “Expensive James” in your inbox.
Expensive James,
Within the second half of final 12 months, I went to a naturist seashore for the primary time. I used to be afraid on my complete stroll there that I might rooster out. However there was no person round for miles—so I stripped. Since then, I’ve executed it 5 extra instances, at numerous seashores, with rising confidence, in entrance of different individuals who have and haven’t been clothed. I’ve discovered nice peace in mendacity bare on the sand, listening to the waves.
However: Over the winter I began to get these emotions of disgrace and guilt. I used to be raised a really strict Catholic. And though my mom has been lifeless for a decade, I can out of the blue really feel her sturdy disapproval from past the grave.
It’s a conundrum. How would you deal with it?
Expensive Reader,
Properly, I used to be in church on Sunday morning for the Feast of Pentecost, celebrating the wacky mandate of the Holy Spirit to go the place it pleases—to land, if it likes, proper on high of anyone’s head (your head, my head, anyone’s head) and nest there in a throbbing bolus of flame. So yup, I’m able to get Catholic about this. I’m able to get dogmatic.
Your physique is a present from God. Within the acceptable place (reminiscent of a naturist seashore), it is best to be capable of go as bare as Adam within the backyard and really feel not a twinge-let of disgrace. You ought to be just like the primal newborns within the Doorways’ “Ready for the Solar”: “At first flash of Eden / We raced right down to the ocean / Standing there on freedom’s shore.” (Who dares to say Jim Morrison isn’t a fantastic American poet?) Isn’t that the true spirit of nudism? They don’t name it a birthday go well with for nothing. Shed your garments; shed every little thing that cramps or abashes you. Air out these musty components. Unshadow your self. Let all of it flap. Be an actual American. Scamper shoeless throughout the sand into liberty’s gold-green dawn.
Me, I’m not nice at being bare. It makes me really feel too … bare. So I do know the place you’re coming from. However you’ve executed so effectively, made such strides in self-development. The arrogance, the peace, the waves: Hold going! After all—as at any breakthrough second, any evolutionary threshold of the psyche—you’re being swarmed by the previous demons, now at further power: guilt, shame, a picture of your mom scolding you. They’re to be stoutly resisted. Think about as an alternative your mom’s enjoyment of you as a child, in all of your sweet-smelling, roly-poly nudeness. Think about actuality taking pleasure in itself throughout the floor of your pores and skin. Final phrase right here goes to Gerard Manley Hopkins, nice Catholic sensualist, nudist in his coronary heart: “The Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with heat breast and with ah! vibrant wings.”
Protected in my trousers,
James
By submitting a letter, you’re agreeing to let The Atlantic use it partly or in full, and we might edit it for size and/or readability.
