It is a well-known truism that people seldom write about things that have gone well in their lives. Instead, people tend to write about matters that have brought them (or those close to them) some degree of difficulty. Yet at the same time, it is often thought that admitting the close and personal nature of the subjects of one’s interest is often a bad thing, because it is feared that to admit that one is writing about a given topic with a given perspective invalidates one’s thoughts because they reflect a personal bias that is not shared by others. On the other hand, there are those who consider their personal biases and perspectives to be so infallible as to present themselves as being the purveyors of absolute and universal truth in hammering others over the head with subjective feelings and biased perspectives about one’s own identity and experience. It should be trusted that this essay seeks to avoid both extremes, in that while there will be a great deal of personal experience and anecdotal observation made, being a guide into such experiences and observations and using them to allude to deeper implications is a far different matter than hitting others over the head with them. The one is an invitation to a conversation, and the other is mere rhetorical violence.

Nevertheless, even if I seek to avoid the extremes of either trying to ignore the very subjective sources of my interest in the subject, to discuss such matters requires a fair bit of tact and decorum. I have already indicated previously that I grew up in a farming family where shoveling cow manure from sixty head or so of dairy cattle was not an unusual task, and that the resulting manure was used as fertilizer, thus showing manure to be seen as a resource. I have a friend whose experience is broadly similar to mine who, when he has traveled to such areas as the outskirts of Tillamook, where there is a large amount of dairy farming to support the cheesemakers there, the smell of cow manure is viewed by him (not unreasonably) as the smell of money. Those with a farming background, or an appreciation of farming, can recognize that poop is a resource, full of nutrients that can be used to benefit the soil. Indeed, in older times poop was labeled politely as “nightsoil” and seen part of the way that people could put back into the soil some amount of the resources that we took out of the soil through our eating. Farmers are not, by and large, overly delicate about such matters. The reality of life, of birth and death, of pooping, of harvesting, and the like, continually intrudes into their existence. Yet I am aware that though I come from a farming family myself, that this is an increasingly rare phenomenon. All too often, sewage is seen as something to remove from our waters to avoid contamination (itself a wise precaution) but is not seen as a form of compost that can be used to provide nutrients for the soil in a natural way that harmonizes with the cycles of our existence, yet in a way that avoids contamination of our own cities and water supplies.

Yet my interest in poop goes well beyond this. One time I was visiting the home of a friend of mine and found, when I went to the restroom, a book called “What Your Poop Says About You,” which led me to query my friend about the book and what it was about, since I did not have time to read it during my time there. This, in turn, led to a conversation about which other friends were particularly fond of talking about their poop. I have, since childhood, found poop to be an interesting thing to analyze and wonder about, but had not considered it to be a subject that anyone else would want to know about. Yet within my circle of friends and acquaintances, it is by no means uncommon for people to talk openly about such matters as the things that pass from our body. As a student in university, a neighbor of mine told me that he liked to drink energy drinks until they disastrously changed the color of his urine and he figured that he should stop. I agreed and thought this was wise. At the same time, I had a friend who would inform me when she was ‘on the rag’ and had to rush off to pick up tampons or maxi pads at the grocery store. I did not feel I needed or particularly wanted to hear about these matters, but at the same time I have not been bothered or offended by them, and that tolerance is enough that people open up about such matters, seeing the intense need of someone to talk to about them. This is especially true of old people, who often find it necessary to tell those within earshot of how regular or not they feel on a particular day. I will have more to say about these matters later on, but I wish to introduce them here in order to comment on the fact that people understand at some level that our body’s natural processes have implications and meanings. We can understand that if we wake up and have a good elimination, that we are probably setting ourselves up for a good day. On the other hand, we also know that problems in elimination can bring a great deal of trouble. If our bodies are not eliminating things, or if our stools are bloody, or if we have health problems that result from epigenetic problems that hinder digestion, we may suffer a great deal.

One might say, so to speak, that in my life, the subject of poop has always been around as a subject of discourse. During my early childhood, for example, it was apparently difficult for me to successfully handle potty training, largely due to some physical damage I suffered early in life. Indeed, to this day I have been affected by that damage. Early on in life, and up to the present day, I have noted the patterns of such matters as sphincter control, knowing how long I have until I must go to the restroom, and planning trips accordingly to make sure that I go to the bathroom in a timely fashion either just before I leave a place or just as I return home, or, sometimes, both. I have noted the slow way that my kidneys process water and my intense thirst. I have seen the way that medicine for gout and other conditions tends to work mainly by shoveling water out of the body with various other chemicals (like the body’s own excess uric acid) in order to preserve well-being. I have looked over the toilet bowl many thousands of times to examine the size, shape, color, and cohesion of poop, to ponder how my body does not digest some things well (vegetables, sadly, appear often in easily visible forms even after digestion and elimination, despite my fondness for eating them), and to see how my body is responding to what I have eaten. I have learned a great deal from such observations, including a knowledge that I simply do not handle pepper very well, despite my enjoyment of Thai and Indian cuisine.

Such knowledge can be a vital part of living well. When reading about multiple intelligences, one of the more obscure ones is intrapersonal experience, the knowledge of what is going on inside of one’s self. It should go without saying that knowing one’s digestive system is a key aspect to knowing what is going on with one’s body. A substantial amount of the body’s behavior involves the elimination of or removal of that which could cause harm to the body or that which are the byproducts of useful processes. So it is that we sweat, we pee, and we poop. Sometimes, if someone allergic to mango accidentally eats it in one’s food, one can do all of those things all at the same time, which is unpleasant (ask me how I know). There is a larger significance to our bodily functions than we often give them credit for. A great deal of elegant life consists of denying the physical reality of our existence, but there is a way that is superior to mere elegance, and that is a life lived full of honest recognition of the sort of beings we are and how we live and what is required for us to exist. There are many problems, though, that relate to our body’s processing and elimination of food and drink, and these problems can often lead us to pay attention to aspects of our lives that we may otherwise prefer to ignore.