It always amazes me how life - any life - can start out with just two cells (or, in some cases, a single cell) and, almost magically, become a human or a horse or a carrot. A sprinkling of amino acids, a dash of peptides and there you have it - life.
Last week, I sliced my finger with a tomato knife while cutting, well, a tomato. It hurt like a monkey and I used a whole paper towel to stop the bleeding. I didn't do much to it - just wrapped a band-aid around it to keep the flap of flesh smooshed down to protect the wound. And now, a week later, it's almost completely healed.
How does that happen? How does the body know what to do? Or even that it needs to fix something? Without me paying much attention to it - I went along my way going to class, studying, searching for jobs, doing yoga - my knife wound healed all by itself. And it goes back to just the way it was before - no scar, no disruption in the fingerprint grooves.
What amazes me is that I don't even know how my own body does it; I mean, I must know - my brain must be orchestrating the production of more blood to make up for what is lost and the production of more protein - but I don't know. Are the mind and brain two separate entities?
Good stuff. Although it hurts my brain to think about it. Or is it my mind? Either way, at least my finger is all better.
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