LIFE -
Body
How do you see your body?
How much of what your body does do you have to consciously think about?
What are you consciously in control of?
In a body that is constantly changing and seemingly pretty independent, where do you reside and remain a constant in it?
Our bodies are miraculous and a paradox. We see ourselves as individuals and see our body in the singular but our bodies are made up of trillions of cells so are we a community?
Approximately 99% of the human body is made up of six elements oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium and phosphorus. Another five elements, sulfur, potassium, sodium, chlorine and magnesium make up around 0.85% of the remaining mass.
According to research the adult male is made up of 36 trillion cells.
A female 28 trillion cells and 10 year old children consist of 17 trillion cells.
Now I am no scientist and I have no idea how all this works I exist yet I am very ignorant about what I am.
Ok so I am made up of 36 trillion cells but around 330 billion cells are replaced daily that is about 1% of all the cells in my body, all in a constant process of decay and regeneration. After every 100 days I am made up of a different 36 trillion cells, a brand new me, brand new yet older, constantly ageing.
Our largest organ, our skin renews itself every 28 days, shedding around 30 to 40 thousand dead cells every minute, which apparently works out at around 9lb a year. Where does it go?
There is an analogy here when it comes to the planet we inhabit. Are we just individual cells in the process of decay and regeneration all playing out part in the body that is earth?
Our bodies consist of between 50 to 65% water, this percentage declines as we get older but usually stay above 50% like the plants in our garden though as we age we dry out!
When we are born our little baby bodies are 78 to 83% water during the first six months of water that volume gradually decreases.
As healthy adults our bodies are about 60% water this would mean a man weighing 70kg would contain 42 litres of water. Now there is only a finite amount of water on the planet and it is in a constant state of flow, it flows through all life. Most adults lose around 2 to 3 litres of water a day and that needs to be replaced. So the water currently passing through your body will have been in thousands to millions of other life forms plants, animals, fish, insects, birds the seas, rivers and lakes, the rain and the puddles that form after a storm.
We are all like raindrops, believing we are individuals until we fall into the sea.
So these bodies we inhabit are a real mystery to most of us, to me it feels like I am being transported about in a vehicle and I have very little understanding of how that vehicle works.
I do not need to concentrate on how my lungs work in order to breathe. I do not need to focus to ensure my body digests the food I eat. I am not conscious of what my kidneys are up to. I have no idea how I can see or hear, dwell on it all for only a minute or two a day and it is a miracle way beyond my own understanding.
Your heart beats around 100,000 times a day. If you squeeze a tennis ball hard that is around the force generated by your heart to continuously pump blood around your body. Blood that delivers oxygen and nutrients to all parts of your body. During an average lifetime a human heart will beat 2.5 billion times without any conscious effort on our part. Imagine carrying a tennis ball around for your entire lifetime squeezing it 100,000 times a day!? Our heart is making that effort to keep us alive.
Now in our society the things we look for in our own and the bodies of others are very superficial in comparison to what is going on beneath the surface. We look at aesthetics, we look for beauty, we judge and compartmentalise others on what they look like. We are all prejudiced and are all discriminated against depending on our looks.
Yet none of us would be able to recognise our own heart, our own brain.
We focus and prioritise differences that should be quite irrelevant, rather than looking at all the commonalities.
