Hi! Folks,
To quote Duncan Morgan in a recent post, “where there is cash to be made, corruption lurks in the shadows.” This statement came into my head this morning during my daily meditation and body scan (and two cups of tea!). I was thinking how odd it is that we are actually cellular colonies, in many ways much like the Roman Empire and other large groups of organized human and non-human animals. My basic cellularity was put right in my face one day when I asked for a copy of a biopsy of a small mass on my scalp, which turned out to be a keratoacanthoma or a squamous cell carcinoma, either of which I was very glad to have removed ASAP (sun damage on my bald spot!). Being a veterinary pathologist by training, I wanted to see my microscope slides, and when I looked down the scope a week or so later ‘there I was!‘ It was so bizarre. I REALLY am a colony, I said to myself (ourselves?). Which comes to issue of my odd sense of being a single organism, which I also am. This is a very odd state of affairs (if you want really odd, look at slime mold!), but it adds great richness to my body scan as I work on my training. Why, however, did this make me think of the comment by Duncan on one potentially negative effect of money, lots of money? Well! My meditating, at that moment of not ‘in the Now mind, drifted from the nature of my cells, to cellular function, to the necessity of blood in their nutrition and waste disposal, to the long, and I must say brilliant (in spite of some of the extreme stances taken by Ayn Rand, but do read ‘Philosophy, Who Needs It,’ which is great) lecture by Francisco d’Anconia on the nature of money in ‘Atlas Shrugged.’
My cells need blood like large societies need money, however, my cells may mutate to become cancerous, as I saw in the biopsy of my bald spot, being ‘corrupted’ (not following the rule!) in order to destroy the society that spawned them. Do cells have ethics, I wonder? Or are these so called corrupt cells a form of ‘the unreasonable man,’ a healthy form of feedback, controlling the giant in it’s own ecosystem through regulation of population dynamics, saving food for the next generation? Which took my wandering mind to TI swimming and my planned swim this morning!
In Total Immersion Swimming, you are encouraged to learn to trust the water, let it take your weight, learn to balance, and use your whole body in a ‘cork-screw-like’ manner. Whether this is good or bad as a technique for different types of swimming, for sprints to distance, is another issue, but it does make one relate to the water in a ‘swimming cell’ like manner, with your body learning to take the line of least resistance, and your arms acting a little like flagella or cilia. It is just you, nothing to hold onto, floating alone in the void. Must be much like that for the original eukaryotes and for cells in your blood, though, just like swimmers, they can spend a lot, and occasionally too much, time on the wall.
Just food for thought, rambling though it might be.
Gottago work on my e-Commerce business, ‘Old Dogs in Training!’
KevinImportant Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
Copyright © 2010 Kevin T. Morgan aka FitOldDog, Old Dogs in Training, LLC.
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