The Ever-Changing Body
I’ve reached a point at which I find myself really looking at my body, because one of the most incredible aspects to me of our journey through this world is living in this home that keeps changing. I suppose it’s one of the reasons why life is less boring than it actually is, because all of our lives we’re having to readjust to this constantly changing body, which went from, we are told, a single cell in our mother’s womb to an incredibly complex nine-month-old fetus that undergoes the birth process, that incredible trip from one world to the next.
I’m more convinced than ever that these pictures are there for our benefit. Going to the next world is going to be like when we came from the last one. It’s going to be quite a ride. But I don’t think it’s going to be painful at all, at least in the sense that we think of pain here. I’m beginning to suspect that there’s really no difference between pain and orgasm, that death throes is just another way of saying birth pangs, except that we are looking at it from the opposite end of the barrel, so to speak, and once we’re in this world, and all of our various organs begin not only to function, but to function together, and our brain begins to expand to the point where it can receive pictures, sounds, ideas, and eventually concepts, and then as this brain continues to change, as does the rest of our body, we begin to perceive things differently than we used to.
Our perceptions are very much dictated by the body we are living in. It’s the difference between being born into a house with high ceilings and big windows that let in the light, and being born in a house that’s small, dark, and cramped, with very few windows. How differently you must view the world from those two different houses.
Here I am looking at this body which used to be that really adorable creature that I can still remember from the age of three on. There’s all those pictures that my mom and dad took, and I look at my brother and me, and how adorable we were, with these wonderfully happy, inquisitive eyes, and in almost every picture -- and there are lots of them – everybody is smiling. I came from a very happy family, which I just took for granted, of course. When you’re that age, your world is the whole world, which is pretty much the way it is all through life, but I see what a happy family I came from, and I remember all the laughter, and I can understand why, at 66, I’m really ticked off at the world and am ready to leave.
I miss the happiness. I miss the laughter. I miss the lack of judgment. No wonder I grew up feeling so good and now feel so dry and arid. In fact, the end of our journey is like going back into the desert. It’s a hot, dry time, where there’s lot’s of solitude, lot’s of insight, but much of the love and laughter we grew up with. That all seems to have gone, along with the people through whom all that joy and laugher came, and when you really look around and realize everybody you’ve ever loved and cared about in this world is already on the other side, and there’s really nobody here you could care about that much or who could care about you, because we just haven’t been around each other that long, you see how God gets us ready to move on to the next world, by making us really weary of this one.
Getting back to the body, I’m looking at it again now and marveling at how resilient it is, despite the fact that it is just doing its own thing in so many ways, but the part that fascinates me the most are the eyes.
I look into my eyes in a mirror and gone is that wonderfully innocent, naïve, childlike glory, and it’s replaced now by a different kind of glory, of time passed, experiences lived, pleasures enjoyed, miseries endured, and boredom -- a real endurance test. I look into my eyes and see those bags under them, and I realize how confused we are when we’re younger.
We look into the eyes of someone 80 or 90 and think we see the eyes of an old person. No, they are the eyes of a person who is tired and weary after years and years of trodding and plodding through this mortal coil.
The eyes tell us so much about people – how much they have experienced, how much they have endured.
I’m more convinced than ever that these pictures are there for our benefit. Going to the next world is going to be like when we came from the last one. It’s going to be quite a ride. But I don’t think it’s going to be painful at all, at least in the sense that we think of pain here. I’m beginning to suspect that there’s really no difference between pain and orgasm, that death throes is just another way of saying birth pangs, except that we are looking at it from the opposite end of the barrel, so to speak, and once we’re in this world, and all of our various organs begin not only to function, but to function together, and our brain begins to expand to the point where it can receive pictures, sounds, ideas, and eventually concepts, and then as this brain continues to change, as does the rest of our body, we begin to perceive things differently than we used to.
Our perceptions are very much dictated by the body we are living in. It’s the difference between being born into a house with high ceilings and big windows that let in the light, and being born in a house that’s small, dark, and cramped, with very few windows. How differently you must view the world from those two different houses.
Here I am looking at this body which used to be that really adorable creature that I can still remember from the age of three on. There’s all those pictures that my mom and dad took, and I look at my brother and me, and how adorable we were, with these wonderfully happy, inquisitive eyes, and in almost every picture -- and there are lots of them – everybody is smiling. I came from a very happy family, which I just took for granted, of course. When you’re that age, your world is the whole world, which is pretty much the way it is all through life, but I see what a happy family I came from, and I remember all the laughter, and I can understand why, at 66, I’m really ticked off at the world and am ready to leave.
I miss the happiness. I miss the laughter. I miss the lack of judgment. No wonder I grew up feeling so good and now feel so dry and arid. In fact, the end of our journey is like going back into the desert. It’s a hot, dry time, where there’s lot’s of solitude, lot’s of insight, but much of the love and laughter we grew up with. That all seems to have gone, along with the people through whom all that joy and laugher came, and when you really look around and realize everybody you’ve ever loved and cared about in this world is already on the other side, and there’s really nobody here you could care about that much or who could care about you, because we just haven’t been around each other that long, you see how God gets us ready to move on to the next world, by making us really weary of this one.
Getting back to the body, I’m looking at it again now and marveling at how resilient it is, despite the fact that it is just doing its own thing in so many ways, but the part that fascinates me the most are the eyes.
I look into my eyes in a mirror and gone is that wonderfully innocent, naïve, childlike glory, and it’s replaced now by a different kind of glory, of time passed, experiences lived, pleasures enjoyed, miseries endured, and boredom -- a real endurance test. I look into my eyes and see those bags under them, and I realize how confused we are when we’re younger.
We look into the eyes of someone 80 or 90 and think we see the eyes of an old person. No, they are the eyes of a person who is tired and weary after years and years of trodding and plodding through this mortal coil.
The eyes tell us so much about people – how much they have experienced, how much they have endured.
posted by Old Timer at 11:21 AM
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