Poser!

I'm increasingly convinced that posturing works. In the words of a wise and experienced teacher, "Fake it till you make it." What I think she means by that is, roughly, practicing the outward form of the kind of life you admire, even in a superficial and flawed way, can bring about some significant changes.

If you don't achieve anything else, the act of posing as [insert desired character attributes here] aligns the body, outward appearance, and attitude in a certain way that gives the impression that you actually know what you're doing. Assume the posture. Do it again. Repeat until all the weight-bearing structures and all their supporting levers and pulleys adapt.

On one level, posturing is a practical way to replace one set of habits with another, hipper and more enlightened, set of habits, kind of like buying new clothes can make the same old dork feel like a new man for about an hour. Sometimes the shoe fits, and you can wear the new persona immediately. (This has happened maybe once that I can remember.) Other times the fu shits, you wash it off and try again.

Usually it takes a long time (gongfu) to take on the attributes of the form, the guru, or the role model, so there is a gap between the objective, fumbling 'me' and the ideal, integrated 'it'. My hips don't want to rotate wide enough, my head doesn't want to rest vertically on top of my spine, my mind won't focus with crystaline clarity. There's a reaction (oops) and a resumption (there), followed by a relapse (damn) and a reset (okay), and so on indefinitely. This chain of events can resemble a rote drill more than a peaceful meditation, and there might not be much difference, at least for a beginning poser.

I suppose I've been posturing on and off for forty-plus years, and my skill in posturing has improved markedly. As a little kid I was just Sven. My friends knew me and other people didn't. Then at some point, probably adolescence, I decided to be somebody, so it became necessary to act the part of an athlete, a cool guy, a writer, a responsible young man, a deep thinker, or whatever attracted girls. If you're paying attention, there are role models from whom to pick up moves, and if you're not paying attention, well, never mind.

A big part of it in my circumscribed world was body language. Standing, sitting, or walking a certain way, physically placing the muscles, bones, and joints in a certain relationship with gravity, conditions malleable soft tissues, brain, and nervous system with the know-how and disposition to act like the jocks, the hipsters, the guys chicks dig. We were all in training, and for those who persevere, the body takes on the shape of the aspiration. Practice, practice, practice, and hope it takes.

But you knew that. Did you also know that posturing is related to all these wonderful words in that fabulous lexical landscape we call the English language?

A. positive
B. impose
C. posit
D. expose
E. oppose
F. component
G. dispose
H. position
I. postpone

Now, use all of them in a sentence, you poser.