Jan 28
a universe within
i had a sudden realization today — a blowing out of proportion, you could say.
the human body contains an estimated 30 to 37.2 trillion cells. this figure varies by individual size, age, and sex — approximately 36 trillion for adult males, 28 trillion for adult females, and around 17 trillion for children. red blood cells account for roughly 80–90% of this total.
approximately 330 billion cells die and are replaced in the human body every day. that’s about 1% of all cells — primarily blood cells and the cells lining the intestines. this equates to roughly 3.8 million new cells per second.
to me, this is astounding. the sheer population of births and deaths occurring within your body each day exceeds the number of humans currently living on the planet many times over.
but it gets deeper.
a red blood cell lives for an average of 120 days. white blood cells live for one to two days. skin cells last two to four weeks. liver cells live for ten to sixteen months. fat cells can persist for eight years. bone cells for about ten years.
heart muscle cells can live for up to forty years.
and neurons — brain cells — can last a lifetime.
whoa.
allow me to try to communicate the scale of this astonishment. say you live to be 89 years old. certain neurons in your body will have outlived your red blood cells by a factor of 270, and your white blood cells by over 32,506 times — assuming, in the most extreme case, that those white blood cells lived only a single day.
why does this humble me so deeply? because even within the “me” i think i am — defined narrowly as this physical vessel — there are lives unfolding at vastly different scales of time. there are lives lived for a year, and lives lived for what would be, relatively speaking, 32,506 years. all interacting. all collaborating. and yet in service of a greater whole.
it makes me wonder what it’s like to be a white blood cell in the presence of a neuron. how humbling that experience might be.
let's really sit with this truth: there are parts of myself that leave a white-blood-cell-sized impact, and parts of myself that leave a neuron-sized impact. and yet, both are essential.
white blood cells defend against bacteria, viruses, fungi, and cancer. they coordinate immune memory and inflammation. they repair damage and maintain internal stability.
neurons enable thought, memory, emotion, identity, and creativity. they control movement, breathing, and heartbeat through neural circuits. they coordinate perception and decision-making.
without both components functioning properly — consistently, cooperatively, committedly — the system ceases to function.
the great mystery of being is that all of these incarnations within our bodies, at such radically different proportions, are serving something higher: a perceiving intelligence capable of recognizing their function from beyond them.
if this doesn’t make your jaw drop in astonishment… well. maybe that’s the cancer cell of ego speaking — the part of us that insists on identifying only in part. and even then, perhaps even the prideful parts have their function.
hear me out.
what if instead of calling it our “lower self” and “higher self,” as spiritual circles often do, we called it our white blood self and our neural self?
the white blood self being the part of us that spans a single human lifetime. the neural self would be the part of us that spans what would be, proportionally, 32,506 generations of human lives.
can you imagine how you might choose to live if you truly knew your actions affected lives 32,506 grandchildren down the line? can you imagine how your understanding of life might shift if every day you witnessed 330 billion births and deaths unfolding around you?
and yet, this is exactly what is happening — right now — within your own body, on the cellular level. don't even get me started on the atomic.
i don’t know what word describes this phenomenon better than humbling. a humbling so deep it asks you to reconsider your entire life from a different vantage point. that there may be a self beyond even your human self and your intergenerational self — and a consciousness capable of integrating them both.
boom. mind blown. as it should be.
to me, god is the ineffable source of all things — the selfless self that cannot be reduced to any other part, yet somehow contains every identity in its comprehensive brea(d)th.
tell me — as you breathe, right here, right now — can you identify yourself as a single cell within your body? can you identify as a living co-creation of roughly 35 trillion parts?
can you see yourself as a single human vessel? can you identify as 35 trillion neighbors?
can you identify as one?
the only way, i think, to comprehend myself in all these forms is through a surrender that is at once profound, intelligent, and humbling.
the surrender of a cell in service to the universe, and the surrender of the universe in service to a cell.
the surrender of one in service of all, and the surrender of all in service of one.
i surrender.
with infinite love,
thank you