With or Without You

Your body is a temple, it is said. The word brings associations to concepts like purity, holiness and worshipping. A temple is strong, durable, it is to be treated with the respect it surely deserves; a home of gods, after all, created to serve something higher. What don't spring to mind as readily but are equally applicable are decay, ruins, the demolition that is time; that even temples will fall.

And of course the body is really not a temple at all. It is a collection of tissues, a patchwork of muscles and bones, cartilage and fat, held together by a fragile tree made of blood. The human body is a sophisticated machine, complex and fine-tuned to the extreme by evolution; and yet it breaks so easily, squashes into a mush from the power of an impact. The body yields, the soft tissue gives in and tears and the bones shatter into pieces; the life sustaining blood spills and runs dry. Through the injuries life leaks out and all that is suddenly left is dead mass, surprisingly heavy to move.

That is what your body is; not a temple.

The body is faulty, it gets sick and it fails; and even if you can build it, make it stronger and faster, there can still be a glitch in your code that will take you down completely unexpectedly. You have no way of knowing and nowhere to complain. 

Because your body is what you have to live in, your true home in this reality and the only thing that is really yours. Your skin is where you end and the limit of your knowledge; everything outside it is guessing. 

And this is why you should respect your body; because really, what would you do without?