Think of yourself as God. That is, assuming you are not a deity, but a regular individual living the best life you can. Wouldn’t it be better, though, knowing more about what makes you something special, a spectacular universe managed by you? And how favorably you compare with a God…
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
By David Stone
Think of yourself as God and your perspective flips…
You may flinch — or laugh — at the idea of yourself as God, but wait a minute.
Back in the early centuries of Christianity, believers sang God’s glory by, they thought, quoting Jesus. Nothing is trivial, they said, because every hair on your head is numbered. By God.
Author’s note: Here’s where I must tell you that I am not a Christian nor a member of any other religion, just an interested observer.
Pagans and atheists laughed at such nåivete. How could any God keep track of all that let alone care about ordinary people? Some philosophers, like Lucretius, readily conceded that there were gods… but they were too elevated and busy to care about scruffy humans.
Numbering the hairs on your head? Nah, no God worth his tithe would stoop that low.
But wait a minute, consider what we now know…
Before landing firm on the idea that no divinity could manage that much space, so much material and so many humans, think of yourself as God.
There you are, maybe half-watching TV, wondering if the Yankees are really that bad… Or maybe you’re washing dishes and daydreaming about Tahiti and all those beautiful Tahitians…. While you’re at whatever it is, think for a minute about all that’s going with your miraculous body.
You’re sensing hot and cold, listening to ambient noise, smelling passing scents, making mental images from what your eyes and other senses give you. You’re pretty busy, worrying about budgets and who shrunk your pants.
Now, consider all those other things. Inside, you’re mixing enzymes, filling out proteins and pumping blood through 60,000 miles of piping. And guess what? You’re also maintaining those pipes and all the life-giving chemicals rushing through them.
Perhaps, you should consider the incredible complexity of your digestion before agreeing with Shakespeare.
What a piece of work is man!
William Shakespeare – Hamlet
Thinking of yourself as God yet?
Estimates vary, but it takes somewhere from 60 to 90 trillion cells to operate your body. True, even when you’re doing nothing more than clipping your toenails. Or painting them.
Let’s salt that with another staggering thought: the majority of those cells are not human. They’re viruses, bacteria, fungi and other microbes, but you can’t live without them.
So, you’d better start thinking of yourself as God or something equivalent. If you’re uncomfortable with traditional religions, you might prefer another word. Like “Source” or “all there is,” but it all looks the same when it rolls out of the carwash.
If not a deity, how could you possibly manage 60 trillion cells, each with its own internal universe yet working successfully with countless others in keeping you up and running.
Conclusion
Often — actually very often — we make the mistake of casting all of reality at human scale. I’m 6′ 2″, for example, and to me, our two cats look small.
But to them I must look like a giant while a giant sequoia might consider me a pipsqueak.
A virus may be as small as 0.0000008 inches, but really big ones might be six times that size. Bacteria are larger, 5 to 10 microns long. A micron, to clarify, is one-millionth of a meter. Yet trillions of these tiny microbes communicate with human cells, coordinating with your gut brain, turning food into nutrition.
And there you are, running the whole show. Give yourself credit. You’re more like God than you know, handing at least 60 trillion cells, all at the same time.
The average head has only 100,000 hairs. Numbering all of them doesn’t seem so hard, after all, does it?
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What the Promenade Remembers
The light on the East River in the early morning is different from the light anywhere else on the Island. It comes in low and sideways, catching the water in long, uneven flashes. On certain days it makes the promenade feel less like a walkway and more like a corridor someone once meant to finish but never quite did. When I was younger I found the suggestion to stop and look at it faintly ridiculous.
