FRAGmeNT

One very interesting word. By its definition, below, it describes just about everything that is around us, what we see, what we observe, even what we are as individuals - all fragments of a bigger whole, the entire size of which is beyond our imagining.

"A fragment is a small piece that's come off a larger whole, and to fragment is to break. If your teacher writes "frag" on your paper, you've got an incomplete sentence. Fragment, meaning "a tiny, brittle shard," first appeared as a noun and later as a verb".

Interesting indeed. No word will probably best put anyone in his or her place the moment he or she begins to think so highly of his or her status or position in the overall scheme of things.  Anyone - king or subject, CEO or janitor, celebrity or nobody, no matter the gap in status or wealth - is still a fragment of a population, lost to a world much too big to care in the long run.  A fragment today, a fragment of a memory a century from now, just as all of what we know or remember of anyone or anything today are all fragments of our memories or of what's in the record books.

Interesting still is the fact that a "fragment" in the English language, though it may begin with a capital letter and ends with a period, even as a group of words,  does not express a complete thought.  It is not even a complete sentence.  But it is a rich mother lode we can all mine for all kinds of metaphor or analogy.  Think about it.  Every living thing today is a fragment of whatever it is a part of.  Anyone can or may retort with this, "So what? That is neither here nor there".

Yes, "So what?" indeed. But think about this. Interdependence is the backbone of what we know today as modern civilization.  Centuries ago, modes of behavior, manners, and the ability to not only recognize but to document what is right or wrong, morally or socially, came about because people realized that interdependence among individuals provided the framework for cooperation and cohesion.  What  historians do not usually talk about is that somewhere in our genes and all the genes of everything that ever lived is one tiny bit of information that says, "Remember you are a fragment of a whole.  Everything you do is not just for self preservation but for the continuance of your existence so that your legacy, though a mere fragment, will live on."  Not in so many words, of course, but that is exactly what keeps a species going, how survival is a natural instinct towards longevity, and why cooperation is nothing more than fragments pulling together to better the odds.

On a different level, we only remember fragments of a dream, or realize that we've only achieved fragments of our life's dreams, or ambitions.  We may only know fragments about the people we know, and so we also show only fragments of who we are to others. It is a fragmented world, isn't it?

First discovered between 1946 and 1947 by Bedouin shepherds in various caves in Qumran, by the Dead Sea, were scrolls upon scrolls of ancient writings, by an ancient group of people, known or widely believed as the Essene, who  independently documented accounts of the scriptures that are in The Bible.  Some scrolls were intact but hundreds and hundreds of pieces  survived only as mere fragments.  Today, most of what can be seen publicly in museums, and who knows how many are in private collections, are fragments of parchments.  And they are no less of value than entire scrolls and are in fact subject to all kinds of scrutiny by scholars, historians and scientists.  Fragments of writings too vague to get a full story seem more intriguing to researchers. Likely too, there are fragments out there in collectors hands that are counterfeit. There lies the allure and mystery of fragments.

When a young man sees from across a room a face and a smile his interest is piqued not so much by what he sees but what he doesn't yet see or know about her. A mere fragment, an image, a movement, a something - all fragments - are enough to quicken his heartbeat, enough to compel him to move mountains or forged raging rivers just to get to know her, let alone spend even fragments of time to be with her.  Fragments.

Such is our world. Such is our history.  Our future will be no more organized than a series of potentially probable fragmented events yet to occur.  A fragmented handful of individuals will lead our way or lead us astray. So far, we've been fortunate to have had a fragmented group of individuals who were there to shape the workings of civilization.  Our history is suffused with individuals the likes of King Solomon, The Prophets, Alexander, Socrates, Archimedes, Washington, Isaac Newton, Einstein and even Hitler and Stalin, Churchill, Eisenhower, many more. Each or as a group, mere fragments but enough to have affected the trajectory of history. Many countless others are lost to such a long and convoluted history as mere fragments but whose lives ever so slightly touched countless others.  

There was a fragment of a life and death of one Jose Rizal, in a tiny fragment of an archipelago of 7,000 islands in a vast area of the Pacific, just five generations removed from today, whose contribution to the lives of his contemporaries may be nothing more than a footnote in history. But today's population of about 105 million people can trace their fate to a fragment of their history that occurred one early morning 131 years ago on a field. From a fusillade of a firing squad.  Historical figures. Historical fragments. Fragmented events that took one nation to today.

Now, keep this in mind, all we can touch, affect or direct, happens only at fragments of a time. One moment now, a fragment of the past, one moment from now, a fragment of yet to come.  Yet we worry too much about what are yet to happen and we anguish over what already occurred.  That, unquestionably puts everything way too simply or much too casually, but such are what fragments give us.  

Did I not mention early on to "mine for all kinds of metaphor or analogy".  

Whoever we are, to the world each a fragment.  We are a fragment to a stranger.  And so to friends and co-workers if fragments are all that we want to reveal. The janitor or cleaning woman is a fragment to the executive leaving the office late one evening.  But so is the executive a fragment to either one, whose take home pay for tonight's labor is surely a fragment of even just the withholding tax for the executive's income.  But as fragments go, is one of lesser value to the other? 

The executive who decided to stop and talked to inquire how the janitor and his family were doing was a fragment of a moment.  The two individuals were two fragments, in a fragment of time, unknown to any observer from a far away view. Far away to listen to their conversation but what happened afterwards is what allows a fragment to loom large above all the other fragments in the world.  The executive, upon hearing of the janitor's very sick wife, alone with their two children, all waiting at home, told the janitor to go home.  The janitor protested but the executive promised he will talk to the building's manager about it. Then another fragment.  He took the janitor home but on the way stopped by to pick up some food to go for the family. But the story did not end there.  In a fragment of a snap decision the executive, with the janitor and the children in tow, took the mother of the children to the hospital, and made sure bills were taken care of until she got better and released three days later.  Two fragments. Two intersections that were but a moment, a blink, a fragment in the grander scheme we call life.  

From far away two tiny fragments that together were made large, but often in life that is all that it will take for a fragment to mean a lot more. Much more than could have been but sometimes fragments conspire to make something larger when least expected and the world is better for it.

Postscript

The fonts of the title word, FRAGmeNT, was intentional. The two letters "me" were in lower case, as intended.  Ascribe whatever you like as to what it means to you.  Although in this season of giving, it is best that those two letters are in lower case. Indeed.

Year

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. ...

                                                                  -------- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Days Gone By: Physics Offers Explanation To Why Time Flies As We Get Older"

"Now, a fascinating new study is offering up a more scientific explanation: as we age, the speed in which our brains obtain and process images gradually slows, resulting in this temporal discrepancy in memories.

Simply put, this slowing of the brain’s imaging speed causes perception of time to speed up."

Another way of saying it is that it only seems that way and in reality time is not going any faster or slower. It could also be that it is just how we remember it as a child because there was so much ahead to look forward to then, while today's older folks dread that "time is running out". Fast forward to three decades from today and these young ones who feel time is going too slowly will have aged by then and they too will be ruminating no differently from what the older folks do today.

One can be obsessed with time, another maybe nonchalant, some may even claim to be simply agnostic about the whole idea of time or getting old.  Perhaps the latter does actually make sense and that it must be the proper way. We've heard of the expression, "marching to a different drummer".  Well, maybe it is true some folks simply look at or sense time as "running on a different cadence" from the rest of us.

And there lies the enigma of time.  This takes us to this often cited statement alluded to Albert Einstein - no specific evidence he actually said it - when he tried to explain his theory of relativity when he said (purportedly),  “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

One thing we know for sure that is supported by history is that the measurement of time, as in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years were all made up by us. It is not based on some universal timing mechanism that regulates everything according to an unbreakable set of rules.  

Merely from our point of view, the shorter units of "time" were from arbitrarily subdividing into smaller units of intervals that which are contained within what it takes for the globe to circle the sun.  The number of days in it was an approximation based on the number of degrees in a circle (exactly 360).  The 365 was an approximation that needs to be corrected with one leap year every four years.  

365-1/4 days a year, effectively as the average length of a year. 12 months divide a year, each month, alternating between 30 and 31 days except in February that has only 28 days except on a leap year when it gets 29 days and then we have two consecutive months of 31 days each: July and August. A month is approximately how long it takes for the moon to make one complete orbit* around the earth.  (*The phase of the moon is nothing more than its location to the earth relative to the sun. For example, a full moon means that it is directly opposite relative to where the sun is, thus it gets the maximum sunlight reflecting back to us, which we perceive as the full moon. That moonlight diminishes to almost nothing by the time it is about in between the earth and the sun. A perfect alignment is what we call an eclipse. Actually, its orbit is not a perfect circle so it takes on average 29-1/2 days to make one full circle).

24 hours is merely subdividing the time it takes for earth to make one complete rotation on its axis.   Minutes and seconds are just as arbitrary as well.  So, time or the concept of time is a human invention.  Really?  Really.

In some far away solar system from some far away constellation of stars,  even from galaxies far, far away, surmised inhabitants in one of the planets there, if they have advanced their civilization to some level similar to ours if not more so, they could conceivably have stumbled into a different idea of time - different from ours entirely.  However, there is no telling how it would be like.  How would they have divided the units of time.  The length of their days, between daylight and nightfall, will depend on their planet's size and its speed rotation around its access.

So, we've established our concept of time is local. And time, therefore, is really just an arbitrary concept, an illusion. I repeat, it is an illusion.  The reader, if this gets too much or rendered to involuntary rolling of the eyes, may stop here and go on about your day, unless you are curious to find out why time is just an illusion.  Understanding it or finding out, I'm afraid, will not make your day any longer or shorter, nor improve your allocation of time.   Now, you can walk away if you want or take an aspirin if the headache is unbearable and read on.

Here it comes.  Let's do a thought experiment.  We do not need a laboratory.  All that is required is an open mind and some imagination.  Imagine two huge wheels with 365 teeth (gear teeth) each positioned horizontally next to each other on a flat surface.  Imagine two people.  One sits at a location facing and nearly touching a section of the rim of the one wheel that is rotating on its axis. We call him the Sitter (S).  Imagine another person who walks along the rim of the other huge but stationary wheel nearby.  We call him the Walker (W).  The sitter observes the wheel turning and he can clearly see it moving one gear tooth at a time at a fix interval passing in front of him. He merely observes the teeth moving along but he does not have a watch or timer; in fact, he does not even have a concept of time, except he knows the gear to have 365 teeth.  Now, at the beginning of his observation, thinking about all the teeth that have yet to come along his view, he is prepared for a long haul of observation. The sitter (S) makes note of the intervals.

The walker (W) observes each tooth by walking along the rim of the stationary wheel and sees each tooth at regular interval according to his pace.  In the beginning of his walk, knowing how many teeth to go, he makes note of his pace.

At the start, (S) must perceive a slower interval between each tooth as he knows there are plenty more to come along his observation seat.  The same way with (W) who at the beginning of his walk he must perceive his pace as slow as well because of all the teeth ahead that he must cover.

Now, by the 350th, or 360th tooth, either one of them must sense the intervals to be a bit faster than what it used to be at the beginning.  The perception is exacerbated by the fact that each of them was told that at the end, by the 365th tooth, their fate is unknown.  The end is sealed with uncertainty and oblivion.  Their sense of each interval, whether as (S) or (W) is influenced by the anticipation of the end closing in.  The intervals seem to go much more quickly, made worse by their eagerness for more teeth to observe because otherwise, the uncertain end will come.  It would have felt as if the teeth were coming along much too fast.

Now, assume one gear tooth as one event.  If they were to define the intervals between the series of events then one must define the gaps in between each occurrence.  That definition is something they will sense as time. (S) or (W) are different observers but they are likely to define the gaps the same way and make sense of it in a similar manner. Not necessarily, even if the gear tooth passes (S) at the same pace as (W) is walking. They just defined the concept of time as something that merely separated the teeth from each other. More importantly, and this is crucial, the gaps made sure the teeth did not all come at the same instance.  Except that one observes each event by watching each tooth come along as (S), or observes each tooth as they walk along the rim, with (W) going from each event to the next.  Nevertheless, each gap made sure all the teeth - all the events, or every happening - do not come all at once.  Time as defined by them made sure that not everything is observed all at once.  Time therefore is nature's way of making sure not everything happens all at once and insuring it is all in sequence. A broken egg is observed as first being a whole egg and then its shells breaking and its contents all spreading out on a hot skillet.  It is never observed to reform from the skillet back to being a whole egg.

One more thing.  Someone driving along the countryside will have perceived time a lot more differently from someone waiting at home anxiously awaiting for his arrival.

Now, you know why time then becomes subjectively an illusion. If you've come this far then it wasn't so bad, was it?  I made that little thought experiment up but you will have to agree that we as individuals will observe the flow of time differently.  Now, you may argue that the clock is the ultimate arbiter and therefore it makes time absolute.  You will cite that Michael Phelps won his event by touching the pool's end ahead of everyone else, or that within the seconds left in the game the basketball made it through the hoop in time or not.  There is no argument there.  But here is where it gets weird.  Even weirder.

E.T. observing the race or the basketball game through a powerful telescope from their planet around their star XG-2 from a constellation far, far away, will have a different sense of how fast Michael Phelps was or that his time to finish was either longer or shorter relative to how the local earthling saw the race.  E.T. will also observe that the time it took for the basketful from the shooter's hand to get to the hoop is at a different rate from how it was observed here on earth. There will be no dispute as to who won or whether the basketball made it in time or not.

Let's go back to the earlier quote:

"...the speed in which our brains obtain and process images gradually slows, resulting in this temporal discrepancy in memories".

Is it that or because as we get older we have so much more information in our head that we can actually process what we observe more quickly.  Early in my woodworking experience, projects seemed to get forever to finish, obviously took longer to complete as my skills were limited.  Clearly so were my access to better tools and more efficient techniques.  Today, not only do I finish projects much more quickly, the quality is not only more refined, it is a lot more sophisticated.  That is my opinion.

The larger question is this.  As we go through life, specially as we get older, do we become the sitter (S) or should we continue to be the walker (W)? We can just sit and let things go by us or should we rather be walking and exploring to get to them.  Even if we are physically slowed down, or even deprived of our mobility, we can still walk with our minds. Let us not be sitters.  We may not do it as briskly, physically or mentally, but we ought to be walkers.  We ought not to let the world pass before our eyes, let us get to the world - physically or with our mind's eye - by walking through it.

Microbe

Infinitesimally small, fleetingly short lived. That pretty much covers the physical description of a microbe - if one has a microscope and the patience to observe its 20-minute lifespan*.  (*of one bacterium, for example, but it is known to multiply to  over 2 million copies of itself in 7 hours. Add another hour and it becomes a colony of over 16 million).


Below is the E. coli bacteria magnified 10,000 times.

Since the first moment the scientific world  realized these invisible creatures were responsible for the loss of millions upon millions of human lives and livestock (from chicken to cattle) and countless non-lethal but nevertheless miserable illness and suffering, we had been waging a never ending war against them. The bad news is that we are not winning.  The good news is that we've had some significant victories.  Enough wins to have saved millions of lives.  Enough for our species to survive this far - up to today.  But the microbe is one formidable adversary.  Bacteria has a remarkable ability to mutate within hours after exposure to anything that threatens them, such as antibiotics if not taken to the entire prescribed dosage.  On the other hand antibiotics do not work against viruses.

Now, before we cast eternal distaste for the microbe, think of this greatest irony of all irony: our very existence actually depends on them - not from just a few varieties, but actually from a lot of them.  Of the million different kinds of microbes, only 1415 of them (exactly) cause illness on humans; unfortunately, almost a third of all deaths worldwide are from infectious diseases each year.  Fortunately, we live because of them too. Microbes co-evolved with us and likely influenced the trajectory of the changes we went through.

"Make no mistake.  This is a planet of microbes. We are here at their pleasure.  They don't need us at all.  We'd be dead in a day without them."

------ Bill Bryson

Life, as we come to realize is tiled with endless dichotomy.

Microbes mind bogglingly outnumber us. But even more exceedingly head numbing is the fact that if we actually put all humans on one side of a balance scale and all bacteria on the other abruptly, we'd all be sling shot  into space.  That is because all the bacteria on earth outweigh us by more than 1100 times to 1.  And that is just bacteria. When you add to it all the viruses, fungi, algae and protozoa (all belonging to the family of microbes), then there is no question, they own this planet.

Our own body is literally a planet for microbes.   That said, the one other ego-shattering sentiment is that our own bodies  are in reality planets of microbes. There are an equal amount of our cells and bacterial cells in our own body (in trillions). But most of our cells are red blood cells which we're told are not really cells (in the strict biological definition of a cell) but merely vehicles for hemoglobin (oxygen-carrying protein).  Our cells are giants compared to bacteria but when it comes to genes - those that contain information about us and bacteria - our genes are outnumbered twenty thousand to twenty million  of the microbe's own. So, in terms of the number of genes we are 99% bacterial.  But not to worry. Our cells are gigantic compared to bacteria; consequently, our cells matter more.  

Our side of the story though is incomplete as an unreadable book if we do not include the fact that our physical existence begun long before we are born.  From the moment of our development in the womb, microbes are already in our gut.  Our mothers put them there through the umbilical cord to prepare us after we leave the protection of the womb and those microbes and other later microscopic interlopers will be there all throughout our life cycle.  And indeed, life is one cycle that revolves around microbes.  Every other living thing from small mammals to the blue whale to fish to birds, even earthworms and termites depend on microbes to help process whatever they eat during digestion, even manufacture certain vitamins inside the bodies and help fight off the bad microbes.

Microbes not only help in digestion, they alone can ferment milk so we can have cheese; convert hops into beer and ferment wine; even makes fruit cake possible and for fruit cake to survive beyond the jokes about it. It makes the story  plausible for the fruitcake to be re-gifted a million times, without degrading or rendered inedible.  Termites too love microbes.  Otherwise, rotting trees and wooden rafters and posts in your home will not be of use to them, if not for microbes helping them to process pulp.  Termites own microbes.  Or, so they think, if termites are capable of thought.  In reality microbes own them too.  

Ownership of this planet is really not up for grabs. The microbes own it.  Microbes had shaped our history.  They had a far greater impact on our development as a society, even shaping our civilization. That is a pretty bold statement, you say.  I will cite just one example. 

Let me mention this first.  Recently in the news was about two cases of pneumonic plague confirmed in China. The Chinese government downplayed the threat that it could develop into an epidemic, and they may be right.  What is true too is that the most dreaded bubonic plague , or "Black Death", that ravaged Europe in the mid-14th century originated from China.  


Yersinia Pestis, or just Y. pestis, is the strain of bacteria carried by fleas.  Though rats then were blamed for the spread of bubonic plague in Europe, fleas were the direct culprit and since fleas also transfer from human to human, not just from rat to human,  rats then were only partly to blame.  Indeed, rats were themselves victims of the flea infestation.  It turned out human sanitation, or lack thereof, was much more likely to blame and in many instances the bacteria was transferred directly  by human to human contact.  Now, you know.

"Black Death". It decimated between a fourth or a third of the population of Europe, depending on varying historical data.  There were two pivotal impacts.  First, there was an immediate cessation of wars.  Territorial and border conflicts stopped.  Second, the reduced population depleted the work force that tended to the fields for agriculture and livestock that rendered the lands unproductive.  

Since those lands were owned as fiefdoms by aristocrats, feudal lords and members of royalty, the diminished income and the soaring cost of rising wages (demand for labor was way higher than the supply of laborers) tipped the balance between aristocracy and the common people. Social hierarchy was no longer as severe as it was before the plague.  It did not take long for Europe's society to be reshaped to what it looks like today.  

Just to be clear though, so as not to mislead, there are many more diseases around the world that have countless casualties.  I just picked on the plague in Europe as an example.  As is well known, malaria continues to kill more people even today and the mosquito, just like the rat, is only a carrier but that the protozoa parasite is the direct cause of the malady.  

Ireland, from 1845 to 1849, was stricken by widespread  potato crop failure "caused by late blight, a disease that destroys both the leaves and the edible roots, or tubers, of the potato plant".  That period was also called the Irish Potato Famine.  About 1 million people perished.  That resulted in one massive migration of the 19th century, predominantly towards the United States.  Since then the Irish contribution to America greatly  enriched the adopted land economically and culturally in many significant ways. Just to name a few, famous Americans of Irish descent were Henry Ford, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John F. Kennedy, Randolph Hearst and many, many more.  History was forever changed because a microbe caused the Great Famine. 

So, we are torn between humility on one hand and a sense of superiority on the other because, well, first of all, we are equipped to know about microbes while they are oblivious to who we are; secondly, here I am writing about them and you reading it but there is just no way  that even collectively they can make one sense of one word here.  Microbes, singly or collectively, can never appreciate the beauty of a sunset or feel the pain of sorrow. But why is the microbe so significant?

Is the microbe a Divine implement?  For those not so inclined to assign this to a Supreme Being, is the microbe the pen and pencil of evolution?  Even more intriguing: Do the microbes represent the countless pigments used by the Creator or by the evolutionary artist to not only paint our world on a canvass with an original painting but are responsible too for the constant revisions and improvements that continue to occur today?  Setting those unanswerable questions aside, it is true we have in our hands the tools to understand the microbe.  Hopefully,  we continue to increase our knowledge and expand our understanding.  That is the best we can do because we are not equipped to totally comprehend the meaning or reasons why despite the microbe's virulence, not everyone dies from it while others perish.  That requires far more wisdom than we can conceivably attain.

Though we can take satisfaction from the fact that we are physically stronger, intellectually developed because of and not despite the presence of the microbe.  The microbe can be treated as divine insurance, or evolution's best tool for life to survive and move on in case we somehow mess things up on this planet.  The microbe will not only be the ultimate survivor but it is also likely the most plausible agent for life to re-start  and re-emerge if we mis-manage this planet's wellbeing.  We can speculate too that in who-knows-how-many millions of years from now the microbe is the likely carrier of life to other extraterrestrial worlds.  

Today, right at this moment, depending on how much you weigh, you have within you anywhere from 1-1/2 to 6 pounds of microbes in your body.  That is not to be squeamish about.  It is to be grateful for.  You are equipped with an invisible sentinel to keep you alive.  Undeniably, as I had mentioned before, so much is involved, so much has contributed to the making of you.  The microbe is that invisible component we need to be aware of. 

Postscript:

The microbe also provides us a profound metaphor for life.  Much of the backdrop for human nature and social behavior is invisible too, much like the microbe.  Thoughts, intents, even feelings are all invisible to everyone except to the person who harbors them.  Invisible that these are, their impacts are not to be trifled with.  Love, sympathy, caring, loyalty, devotion, piety, etc. are generated intensely first within us all but so are envy, jealousy, greed, criminal  and deviant intents, etc., until they are acted upon.  Like the good and bad microbes, they may be invisible but they do exist within us all.  The thought of caring for someone or to be sympathetic to others, even those that are a continent away are beneficial to the human race. Unfortunately, greed and jealousy are as virulent as a microbial assault.  The mind, like the physical body, is a harbor for virulence.  In reality history is filled with despots and dictators acting on their greed and corrupted minds to cause the death of millions of people.  Clearly more than caused by epidemics.  Fortunately for us, despots and dictators are outnumbered by those who are not. 

So far it is fortuitous that there are more vaccines of morality and caring for each other to stave off an all out malevolence to overwhelm human nature or  weaken the human spirit. 

Heartbeat

Heartbeat. The first thing EMTs or any ordinary lay person will check for sign of life on anyone unconscious or unresponsive. One beat. One definite, if not unequivocally so, sign of life. Skip one and it could mean trouble.  Yet it is the most consistently cadenced of all involuntary movements in our body.  On average, we get 100,000 of it every single day.  All from about one pound of almost pure muscle. At the first moment when conception is confirmed at the womb, one tiny little thing begins a pulsating rhythm, for nine months or so, followed by birth and growth and it will keep doing it until the very last moment of life.  The average or normal healthy heart pulses at between 60-100 times per minute, slower at rest, faster during exercise, but palpitates uncontrollably at the sight of someone for whom one is inexplicably smitten by or enamored with, and passionately unbound.

The Guiness Book of world record lists Martin Brady of England as having registered the lowest heart rate of 27 beats per minute, edging the previous 28 BPM record held by Miguel Indurain - a 5-time winner of the Tour de France. Cyclists, specifically endurance cyclists, are known for their low resting heart rates.  Not confirmed by Guiness, however, is that of British pensioner Daniel Green, age 81, who on a clinical check up registered a 26 BPM in 1981. Usain Bolt, the fastest human on record at the Olympics, was clocked at a "speedy" resting heart rate of 33, relatively speaking that is.

What about the fastest heart rate ever?  No one would want to have that record. 100 BPM is considered fast for humans under ordinary conditions. However, a condition that is also a real challenge to Spelling Bee contestants, called tachyarrhythmia, was recorded at 480 beats per minute.  Fast heart rates are not to be aspired for, unless one is a mouse, which needs to pump blood normally at 700 times per minute to survive.  An elephant that according to fabled tales is afraid of the mouse, only registers 30 BPM.  

Back to the heart. The human heart. As essential as the heart is, no kidding, heart disease is the number one cause of death every year - more than influenza, pneumonia, cancer and accidents (all accidents that include traffic, drowning and falling off ladders) combined.  To be expected, some will say, "because it is the most hard working body part".  Smart Alecks will say, "but it is the most exercised" too.  

Indeed, the heart is the hardest working of any part of our bodies. Legs, arms - though they may take you hiking, swimming, running or lifting weights - don't even come close. Arms and legs don't do it 24 hours a day. The heart, even while you are asleep, continues to work.  The moment it doesn't, everything else ceases to function. Besides, arms and legs are literally out of business without the heart first delivering blood to them. One calculation, perhaps again done by some biologist or physiologist with so much time on his/her hands and an unlimited budget for equipment and over time, determined that in one average lifetime the heart had worked the equivalent of lifting 1 ton of weight 150 miles up into the air. That is way above the thermosphere; stratosphere you've heard before, so now you know there is this other layer of the earth's atmosphere.  We learn something every day, don't we? 

Of course, the heart is capable of other physiological wonders, too lengthy to list them all here. However, the heartbeat has one other attribute that may escape physiologists interests but clearly captured by every poet and romantic, oblivious to the physical and the physics of the circulatory system. The business of the heart is as much part of life as everything else. Sometimes to the exclusion of everything else. Ask the countless Romeos and Juliets out there. In every culture.  The heart too is figuratively at the heart of the business of greeting cards and the multi-million floral businesses for much of the year, that bursts into the annual event, almost coercively  in the western world - February 14.  A card, a dinner, a box of chocolate and a dozen or two of the reddest roses are the economic driver of the day.  It is the florist's equivalent of Black Friday in the U.S. - the day after Thanksgiving sale bonanza of the year. 

(Full disclosure*: I don't do the obligatory Valentine's Day. Somehow, I did an awfully good job of convincing my wife from way back when that I do not find one good reason to celebrate the affairs of the heart for a day when I do find it every day for 365 and 1/4 days of every year. It had been 48 years now and counting).   

So guys, you are welcome. But if and when you try it, summon every ounce of courage and sincerity you can muster!  You will need it. But I hope not too many will do it -  for the sake of Hallmark and the American Greetings Corp. and all the florists, restaurants and chocolatier out there.

Now, what has the heart got to do with romance?  Why is it the symbol for love? How did that become so?  Meanwhile, almost every conceivable way to express love is, among many other ways,  are these: 

First of all there is no agreement among those who researched the origin of all heart-related symbols, metaphorical or symbolic, as exactly when it all started.  Some say, the 1250's, others earlier than that while some say it was much much later. One speculation is that it came from the shape of a silphium seed of a variety of flowering plant. Ironically, it was supposed to have been used as an ancient herbal contraceptive.  Who knows, really.

And why this?

"A heart pierced by a Cupid's arrow means that when someone presents a heart, the person takes the risk of being rejected and feeling hurt. Piercing arrow therefore symbolizes death and vulnerability of love. Some people also believe that the heart and arrow symbolizes the uniting of male and a female".

And you all collectively say, many of you anyway, "Whatever?"

Some suggest, it should be the brain. That is where all the thinking originates; where emotions get generated. But what about the sage who said, "Love and thinking don't go together". And, what kind of an image can be conjured by two halves of whitish/grayish tissue; colorless almost and for all intents and purposes - one motionless 3-pound mass that looks like one white, balled up, crumpled paper mache? Or two halves of a cauliflower?  Actually, somewhat eerily, do you notice half a cauliflower looks just like a dissected half of a brain?



Forget all of that.

Let's go back for a bit more to the physiology of the heart. The heart would like to remind us that it is this indefatigable organ that gives life to all our body parts. It will tirelessly beat about 60-70 times a minute and in that time it will have pumped 5-6 quarts of blood or 2,000 gallons each day, without missing a single body part that needs it. If it misses one, it can mean one little trouble or a huge one, depending on which part.  The brain gets  15% of the heart's output but a lot more, 20%, goes through the kidney at any moment and, by the way, the heart itself gets its delivery of blood the same way other parts of the body get theirs.  Yes, the heart is an equal opportunity provider but something blocks the blood flow to it and it is great trouble!

If it has not been made clear to you, read up on it, talk to your doctor: exercise, eat "wisely" (whatever that means but clearly not always what tastes good or just deliciously sweet) but take care of your heart.  Listen to it. It talks to you at one beat per second. 

So, take care of your heart.  If you are lucky, your heart will have produced 3.5 billion beats in your lifetime. I'll save you the few keystrokes on your calculator. 3.5 billion heartbeats mean that you had just celebrated your 95th birthday.  And the one and only reason you got there is because your heart kept beating. So, at any age treat it kindly.


              

 


"With a healthy heart the beat goes on".


* My wife's birthday is on Feb. 18, so unsold plants that include orchids in their fancy pots, still embellished  with flamboyant bright ribbons are 50% off, boxes of chocolate are heavily discounted, and there might be left over fresh flowers kept fresh in see-through refrigerators at the florist's shop. Restaurants will by that time be begging to take reservations. Now, you know.

Memory

Elaine Paige, playing the role of Grizabella in the Broadway musical "Cats", first sung this now  popular, definitive song about a once glamorous cat - a celebrity in human terms - now a shell of what she used to be, faded and even irrelevant, pining at the time of yesteryears, defined by the second paragraph of the song:

Memory, all alone in the moonlight

I can smile at the old days

I was beautiful then

I remember the time I knew what happiness was

Let the memory live again

Memory. The one that has taken up residence in our heads  is a universal something that even earthworms, jellyfish and clams possess, but is still for the most part a mysterious phenomenon. We all have memories but each is exclusively personal and subjectively so. Only as an individual can anyone know what his or her memory is and no one  else can actually even take a peek or look at what's inside another's mind,  unless the person who harbors the memories says what it is, or more precisely what he or she remembers, or what he or she is willing to share.  "Knowing" one's memory too is tenuous at times. And there lies another mystery. Why, how we remember is one thing. What we remember is another. How accurately one remembers is one more to add to the complexity. 

Memory is essential. It is, above everything else, the very first tool for survival. How  organisms find food, seek shelter, avoid danger are only possible because they remember. Why one mammal will run after prey but flee from predators is that delicate balance between life and death in the natural world. In a nutshell memory is at the very foundation of what defines life. But it is likely the most complex of all the attributes of being alive. And in death that is how we will be remembered by others. But it is their memories of you. All of what you yourself remembers, all the memory you have accumulated will have all gone with you. It is intriguing, so mystifying, it can be frustrating, even.

Is memory some kind of record keeping the brain organizes for you?  Is it a scrapbook it puts together for you to look at from time to time?  Is it the Post-It notes that your brain puts on an imaginary bulletin board for you to refer to every now and then? Are they Post-It notes of mistakes you should avoid in the future, a reference of the right things you've done and ought to do each time the same circumstances are encountered or are they  the checklist of bad ones to be avoided? It is apparently all of those, including the ones when you felt harmed by others.  And they are there to remind you later when you get the opportunity to return the "favor".  Then there are good ones too to remind you to be grateful to others or just to be reminded how fortunate you had been where others were not.  It is all of those, in fact.

Having thought about all of those, memory might seem this perfect complement  to everything that exemplifies us from other creatures. You see we have this ability to not only review and analyze but to critique our memories as well, that no other creature is able to do. And why we do this is because we know or it had been pointed to us on more than one occasion that perhaps our memories are not so perfect after all.  And indeed, we know too well memories are not perfect.  So, our brain then is not infallible? And if it is not, why?  See, here is the thing.  Certain people do have such a prodigious memory, others known to have total recall, though limited along narrow subjects, such as, cards and numbers and calendar dates, etc. But often these folks have deficiencies in other areas of memory management or even normal social behavior. The extreme "savants" are often saddled with other inabilities that most normal people are able to do, like empathy and sorrow that "gifted" individuals can be oblivious to.  So, what gives?

The brain is not made for total recall then? Or, is it  that our mind (there is a difference) is not? It is common knowledge, true or not, that squirrels can recall every nut they bury in the ground and that during lean times they go and find them, even after a very long while. One biologist, perhaps another one of those with time to spare and with grant money to spend, took the time to find out. It was a very scientifically sound method she used and she found that squirrels can only recall 90%, give or take 10%, of every buried nut. That is, of course very critical in the realm of ecosystems. The oak tree, for example, is assured that at least 10% of the acorns it produced will germinate and perchance grow to become another oak tree.  The tree's investment paid off. The squirrels that help to spread the acorns get rewarded by 90% of the nutrients the tree produced, but they would, conveniently or not, forget to find some of them, particularly in places far away from the parent tree. Everyone benefited. Thanks to the fact that perhaps the squirrels brain is not so perfect.

What about our brain? It is true that eyewitnesses to a crime sometimes differ in their recollection, even if their observations were concurrent and even from the same vantage point. Is it because the brain is not designed for total recall? For sure, from the beginning of time, the brain did not anticipate to solve algebraic equations and integral calculus or remember chemical valences, or baseball statistics or which monarch followed whom during the entire reign of the Tudors.  That is why we invented computers, wrote text books and posted on Wikipedia.

Perhaps there really is a better explanation for why the brain does not do total recall so well.  For one thing, it is good at filling gaps, accurately or not, and it can be manipulated to harbor false memories, like people who honestly believed, once enticed into believing, that they saw or even hugged Bugs Bunny when they last visited Disney World years before. That can't be true, of course, because Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character and there was no way it would have survived ten seconds before Disney security and cameras found it loitering in the Magic Kingdom.  But such suggestions of false memory succeeded in infiltrating unsuspecting folks who unwittingly believed their implanted memories.

There is an upside in all of these. Forgetting resolves a lot of clutter in our brain. The brain is good too at erasing bad memories.  Sometimes the brain takes it to extreme and people get amnesia - almost erasing an entire period of their experiences to avoid remembering one horrific trauma. It is like a mental check valve, which is good, gone haywire that turned into a total shut-off valve.  But amnesia is real but thank goodness it can be reversible.  Then sometimes too the brain goes way over active on certain things. Inexplicably, people develop phobias. They don't go on dates on Friday the 13th, athletes go through some weird routine to improve or even try to insure victories with no apparent basis, other than to wear the same pair of socks for every game so as not to break the streak. The brain can also cause a mental loop that  propels obsessive/compulsive behavior. But there are some great things the brain does with its ability.

Memory. It is more than a survival tool. We may yet discover other good tricks the brain can do for us. Meanwhile, there are really great things the brain does to use memory as a coping mechanism.  More than that the brain provides us something much more than just the ability to remember.

Memories become these wonderful companions for many of the older folks who, by no choice of their own, live by themselves or feel alone even when there are people around them in nursing homes or around family  members who choose to ignore them. The memories of these folks are their friends who from time to time call on them from the deep recesses of their now distant past, to comfort them and assuage the loneliness.  Memories, accurate or not, are now flush with vivid colors and countless beautiful moments, that are the video and audio the brain sometimes put together for the person no longer able to experience the world out there. Wheelchair bound or not, the brain takes the elderly to places he or she can no longer go to. Memories, sometimes made fun by others for the repeating loops of the elderly's tales, are actually the brain's gift to us.

Let me repeat the two stanzas from the song, one more time,

I remember the time I knew what happiness was

Let the memory live again

You

On one of your emotionally down days - everyone has those kind of moments at one time or another -  you may wonder or even second guess what your true value really is in the worldly scheme of things, or whether your life is up to some noble purpose or, at least, of some relevance or pertinence to others. If that has not been apparent to you yet or not quite made clear to you and to others who care about you at this point in your existence, there is something you must first consider.  It took a lot to make you you.  However, when you do want to look at that, you are faced with, "what, who, took a lot to make you, or to create you?" Well, before you get to that depth of thought, you may want to begin this way, first.

A new book just came out. "The Body", subtitled, "A Guide For Occupants", written by Bill Bryson, is one engaging book.  Easy to read and quite a wealth of material that is all about you - physically. Now, since it unmistakably refers to you as "occupant", you will also have to wonder.  Does occupant mean, "occupancy" in the temporary sense, or is it permanent only in one sense? You will not find the answer to that specific question in the book but there is so much there that perhaps can or will lead you to the answer, if you elect to do that. Or, you can just be satisfied in knowing that "it" took a lot to make you you.  But first things first.

The author begun on page 1, "Long ago, when I was a junior  high school student in Iowa, I remember being taught by a biology teacher that all the chemicals that make up a human body could be bought in a hardware store for $5.00 or something like that. I don't recall the actual sum.  It might have been $2.97 or $13.50, but it was certainly very little even in 1960s money, and I remember being astounded at the thought that you could make a slouched and pimply thing such as me for practically nothing."

That was the estimate then and by any measure, including accounting for inflation, you are apparently very cheap to make.  However, now that science has finally caught up with a little clarity on what really makes you, in current dollars, and the discovery that some exotic chemical elements, such as thorium, niobium, etc. are part of you, the average human body can now be made precisely for $151,578.46 worth of materials. Of that total amount, calcium, potassium and phosphorus account for $73,000.  Add labor cost, sales tax and other "incidentals", you, if you are of average build, can be had for just under $300,000.00.

But, from another source, like Nova, the science show, the value that was presented was a lot less. $168 dollars to make you. The difference? The first modern estimate, from Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry, took only the finest carbon, 30 pounds of it, that by the way cost $69,550 and the purest form of oxygen that is 61% of the total body weight, pristine hydrogen and other exotic chemical elements that together make up all 59 of them to make you. Oxygen and hydrogen will only set you back, relatively, a meager $40. But when all is said and done, that's what you get from an estimator that combines British, Royal and Society all in one line.

Anyhow, based on those two numbers, you could be worth an economy version of a Bentley, or a Lamborghini Urus, or  maybe a Mercedes Maybach (taxes and delivery fees already included for each vehicle price). Or, all of the entire you, based on the Nova estimate, is probably worth just two tickets for an early-in-the-season major league baseball game plus two drinks and four hotdogs.  Those are not premium seats either. They're halfway between  the nose-bleed sections and the dugout.

Whichever it is, if you must know, chemically you are a carbon based organism, where oxygen and hydrogen are a compound in a mixture of 2 parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, otherwise known as water, which accounts for a good chunk of your weight, depending on your eating habits, of course.

You are special because among all the living creatures, you are the only one who is self aware and self conscious. You are concerned about how you look - to yourself and to others. And sometimes you could be preoccupied with how others look to you. Another quote from the book,

"Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes down to the bone."
                                                                            ---- Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was a satirist (and poet) whose life straddled two centuries. She was born in 1893, died in 1967. It was easy for her to say, she was once young and attractive.

She was right about the depth of beauty though. The outer layer, the epidermis, which is how you look to or recognized by others, is only 0.1 millimeter, or about the thickness of bond paper. The skin is the largest organ, about 20 square feet of area, but its pigments are definitely only onion skin deep, yet that is how you are defined racially.  Underneath, white, black, brown, are skin colors so inconsequential, they are  irrelevant.

Now, here is where it gets you to think a little too deeply. If you are indeed average, your body will consist of about 37 trillion cells, all doing different things to keep you "alive", physically that is. Of all of them, not a single cell actually recognizes you, or even care who you are.  They all kind of do their thing, oblivious to who you really are. Even more astounding is that at the atomic level, there are 7 octillion (billion billion billion) atoms to make you.

Bill Bryson wrote, "No one can say why those 7 billion billion billion have such an urgent desire to be you... Yet somehow for the length of your existence, they will build and maintain all the countless systems and structures necessary to keep you humming, to make you you ..."

And here is where you might think more deeply. Bill Bryson, as exhaustive as his writing was, does not cover this, or even give a hint. You are the occupant of a body that does not recognize you but you are the only one that thinks, or care. So, where do you get that ability. Consider this then. It can be controversial, it may not even make sense, but equally hopeful. You may recognize it or this is entirely new to you. What, if indeed your occupancy is temporary in a body made up of cells and atoms that are there merely as a temporary dwelling.  Absurd perhaps but does it not give you much more to look forward to when you know your consciousness could conceivably transcend the existence of 37 trillion cells?

It took maybe 2-3 billion years before you became you. Your DNA can be traced back to proto organisms, a fist size primate, and that 50% of your DNA are shared with a banana. You are smiling or rolling your eyes but you can find this out with a few keystrokes.  Right  now, while you're on your smart phone or tablet, or in front of your desktop. Any break in the cell divisions along your genealogy or the path taken by your ancestors that led to you and you will not be reading this. It took unbelievable circumstances to get you here at this present moment.  It is something to behold. DNA is one of the most enduring phenomenon in nature. It can last for weeks, months, years, outside your body, or millions of years deep in the crevices of a piece of bone.  The trail it left behind to get you here is 2-3 billion years long.

No more speculation.  Just think. There must be more purpose, there must be a universal reason that you are you. To think that will not only give you hope, you will overcome fear, you can look forward to the idea that your physical body is afterall suited only for temporary occupancy and maybe, maybe this thing about spiritual meaning and transcendental existence is what it is all about.  Your call. It is you that matters.  It is all about what makes you you.