“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”
– Albert Einstein
I’m cruising through the air at 1,200km/hr surfing the Internet and sipping on coffee. As I browse through movies on my laptop and decide what kind of snack I want my body keeps working. My heart quietly pumps thousands of litres of blood through my veins and my marrow produces two million red blood cells every second. Cells split and reproduce as others die. I suck another breath of air and use it to power myself up without even knowing how spectacular each breath is. Neurons meet and exchange electricity converting energy to thought, and quietly process needs, emotion, and memory. I feel. Cells split and reproduce as others die.
I’m a carbon-based life form flying on the accomplishment of giants, and in an amazingly engineered body designed by an unseen ghost hurtling through the air on another magnificent creation.
I yawn and recline my chair looking forward to a nap. Cells split and reproduce as others die. My simple eyes look outside the window and can see a tiny part of the light spectrum, so I can see clouds and the sun but not much else. I can’t see the photons from the sun bombarding the earth, nor can I see the pockets of air that cause our sky to be blue. I can’t see the air that lifts my plane, nor can I see humidity.
I can’t see the laws of physics to which we must adhere, nor the waves that come from stations way beneath us transmitting information to my laptop. OK, I decided to watch the new Spiderman as my cells continue to split and die.
I’m made of carbon, yet carbon comes from exploding stars as do most heavy elements on earth like gold, silver, plutonium, iron, and many more. I’m made from a star but who cares. I push the button above me and ask the stewardess for a chocolate chip cookie. My heart pumps quietly along. The water in my body: Two hydrogen cells bonded with a single oxygen cell is ancient.
Brought to earth on meteors that bombarded the planet during its birth this H2O is recycled, just changing form as it jumps from body to body. I wonder how many dinosaurs or olden kings my water has been through.
Down below people are running in an endless cycle like hamsters stuck in a terrible demonic wheel. Work, home, sleep and repeat. Yay, weekend. OK, back to work. Others fight terrible wars for power, also flying on the accomplishments of giants but destroying lives as they trundle along the ground. Their cells are also splitting and dying; like a sand timer that will surely end. Tiny ants on the ground below me.
A piece of ice cracks, and an entire shelf comes apart from a prehistoric glacier. As large as a country; it falls into the sea and quietly floats away. On the Internet people tweet about it, then scroll up and retweet what the Kardashians are wearing. Who cares, it’s not really our problem. Their cells are splitting and dying also, but they can’t see them so it doesn’t count. Just like the iceberg. And the species going extinct. And the pollution. And wars. But who cares..
We don’t seem to realise how amazing it is to just be alive, we don’t appreciate all the technology we have, and we most certainly will destroy ourselves if there isn’t a mass transformation of consciousness.
Each pair of cells that divided comes from an original cell. Children from parents, from parents from parents. It’s a long chain that demonstrates there was a single cell that birthed all life. Call it what you will, but that original cell bonds us.
Somehow, we got trapped in a destructive hateful cycle yet have so much wonder at our fingertips. We create walls, countries, sects, races and imaginary boundaries that we all adhere to like sheep in a pen. Do I dare hope that one day we can just be peaceful species on the planet co-existing with each other and the other fauna?
I really don’t know, but in the time it took you to read this article your body produced about a billion new red blood cells.