Bodies 'R' Us

If you decided you visit my blog today, you are probably bored on a weekend. Let me entertain you.

I have a task for you right now: feel your body. Become aware of it. What is it that its doing while you're reading this?

Why must you do this? Because your body is amazing, and if you ever need to experience a wonder and miracle, just look at the shell that's carrying you. Now, let me convince you of this with my limited knowledge of biology.

Aside from the greatest instrument you'll ever own, it itself is the great instrument there is. Plus, its 100% biodegradable. Can you imagine that? Not even your teeth and skull will remain if they aren't fossilized. You have the most sophisticated code for the most sophisticated information inside you. Your DNA. The best electric circuits, that come with their own damn insulation, are inside you. Your nerve cells. The best motor engine that never needs an oil change is right inside you. You can ever hear it in silence. How we ever got over this and stopped appreciating it, I don't know.

In the words of Paul Hawken:

"In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

Read that again. Slowly. Think about it. As you are sitting down and reading this, your body has performed one septillion functions. 24 zeros. And all this in one second. It looks something like this:

                                                              Courtesy: NCBI. The Molecular Biology of Cell.

And this is just one cell, showing only 500 of those processes, because all these processes cannot, not by a human, not by any computer, be fit on one page even if you abbreviated everything. If that doesn't make you feel awesome, I don't know what will. As you are complaining about your body and how undesirable it looks, it has performed one septillion functions. All at once. Dude.

There is a universe inside of us that we are totally, completely unaware of. We don't realize and appreciate the efficiency of our body until we fall ill, of course. If you ever need to feel lucky, just take one good look at your body as it is leaning on the chair, carrying your consciousness. And it does it so well that you are able to completely ignore it and worry about other seemingly important things like how you look, what you're wearing, if you sound smart when you talk or if you can pull off the latest fashion gig on this body of yours.

So look at yourself and be inspired. Your genome, just by the difference of a few base pairs, sets you apart from the rest of the world. You are a miracle of born out of many million probable events during fertilization of egg by the sperm, and you, you were the result. One out of many million. That is how rare you are. Even your fingerprint will tell you that there is no one else quite like you in this world.

You are unique and you are awesome. Love yourself.

Happy Valentine's Day,
Aditi

[Recommended reading: Paul Hawken, University of Portland Commencement Speech, 09]