Your Body is Amazing!!

by Tom Shafer

January 28, 2020

So recently, I was just putting the finishing touches to another day of living and decided that I needed the warm, bubbling waters of my hot tub to cap it off properly.  Sitting in darkness after closing my laptop screen, I managed to perform a number of intricate chores with my fingers (plugging charging cord to phone, plucking loose kernels of popcorn from the floor, probing the void for a spoon to return to the kitchen) while pushing our braided woolen ottoman across the room with my left foot.  In that moment, I marveled at my body’s ability to accomplish these tasks, even with my sausage-like, somewhat mangled fingers — all without even looking!

If you haven’t thought about it before, I want to be the first to point out that your body is simply amazing!  If you don’t believe me, just take any random one minute segment of any day and closely examine what it is doing.  Watch as your fingers delicately thread a needle or grasp and twist the cap of a bottle of water. Feel your body as it, without direct command, wriggles its way through a crowd of people.  Marvel at your nose’s ability to discriminate the fragrances emanating from the moist, fern-covered floor of a pine-forested fen (it can detect over a trillion distinct smells!). Recognize the marvel of two relatively small feet that maintain and provide balance for a body that weighs as much as fifty times their weight.  

You first need to thank your skin because it truly is your first line of defense against potential disease.  It actually secretes an antibacterial substance that combats and destroys invading microorganisms. Of course, it also protects you from those harmful UV rays and helps to regulate your body temperature.

Your eyes are even more amazing.  Think about it. They must be able to calibrate your vision as the head and body move (all while collaborating with the brain).  Then, they have to focus on a given object while providing the depth surrounding it — all so you don’t fall down or start vomiting uncontrollably!

And, your body’s resilience employs incredible reflexes for protection – most you don’t even know about until you need them.  Your cells actually kill themselves if they know that something is wrong with them — in an attempt to save the rest of the body.

And your fight or flight response is remarkable.  Your muscles have limits to overexertion by design as a means of protection.  But, when adrenaline kicks in during a perceived threat, those limits are switched off.  In that moment, your muscles will work as hard as necessary without restraint, allowing you the superhuman strength to perform the seemingly impossible: lifting a fallen tree to free a trapped family member, opening a crushed door following a car accident — or quickly fleeing a burning structure, perhaps in spite of poor health or even disability. 

Oh, I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.  Over time, humans have survived because our bodies have adapted genetically (slowly but surely) to an ever-changing world.  That doesn’t mean that you and I shouldn’t recognize and appreciate those adaptations.  

So, the next time you and your body perform an exceptional feat — or maybe just some ordinary task that you notice as intricate or difficult — thank it!  You are alive today because behind the curtain, powerful forces are acting on your behalf, thanklessly performing the simple and extraordinary, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.  Your body is worth many, many more accolades than it will ever receive. Perhaps writer David Alejandro Fearnhead says it best: “We celebrate our ability to create machines that move as man, yet we take for granted the miracle that is the human body.”  Hear! Hear!