I have found the book “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made” by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey a most life changing book. What do you think is the most significant discovery of this modern age? The finding of dinosaur eggs on the plains of Mongolia, laid—so scientists assert—some 10,000,000 years ago? The Internet? Wireless? The Airplane? Man-made thunderbolts? No, all of these fail as they compare to the sophistication of a human body.

After reading the entire book many times, I am forced to gloat about my body. It is not very nice to gloat, but you will be forced to gloat as well. And what is wrong with it, if we gloat on something that belongs to us? You can’t be subtle about it.You will be in gratitude to the miracle of your own body.

The secret to understanding your body is to understand how it works. I am going to teach you to open your eyes to this wonderful mystery that is part of you.

If you want to treat your body like the last piece of body left on the planet, then you need to get the idea of how it works to take care of it. You already do this by the way. You take care of things that you have bought with your own money to the maximum. But you ignore what is right in front of you, rather what is inside of you. You treat it as the great unknown. You even go as far as seeing your body as nothing but a nuisance. You grasp how your body works, that will take care of the motivation and the inspiration.

How Your Body Works:

#1. Cell

I will give you an enticing invitation to the basic unit of an organism. That is your cell. You are made up of trillions of cells that made you ‘You’.

This life giving force, your cell, is the most sophisticated little thing that exists on earth. It is sophisticated in many of its abilities (guarding against invaders, building itself, feeding itself, regenerating itself, etc.) That makes you sophisticated. And you have become one through that wonderful body of yours.

This jungle of life and death has real backbone in it. You know a soldier who defends his country against enemies at all cost. We call that soldier brave and ballsy. In a similar yet very complicated way, cells in your body are the armed forces which guard against invaders. These armed forces are specifically known as your white blood cells.

These defenders have their own unique way of responding to injury and infection. When there is no enemy nearby, these fighters are sitting by lazily.When they are not doing anything, they do not seem to be capable of doing a simple single thing let alone fight an enemy. Read the book to understand how the author has beautifully written this mystery to us.

This idleness of your fighters is, till an enemy comes. The moment they smell an invader, they change their shape, size and form. They are no longer idle bystanders.

You, yourself should not be a bystander to your own body. Scientists have now found out that each of your negative thoughts have an impact on your body at a cellular level.

Be positive even for the sake of your physical body. Read an article on ‘Aren’t we more than that?’

The wonderful part is, they do all of these enemy invasion on their own while still giving you your life force. Do you now see you cannot afford to give your body a churlish attitude? The cost is too high. While you are asleep dead to the world, they are defending you at all cost. While you are having the time of your life, your defenders are always working for you without tiring. Don’t they at least deserve from you the garnering of your courage to take care of your body?

“Watching the white cells, one can’t help thinking them sluggish and ineffective at patrolling territory, much less repelling an attack. Until the attack occurs, that is. I take a steel needle and, without waking the bat, prick through its wing, puncturing a fine capillary. An alarm seems to sound. Muscle cells contract around the damaged capillary wall, damming up the loss of precious blood. Clotting agents halt the flow at the skin’s surface. Before long, scavenger cells appear to clean up debris, and fibroblasts, the body’s reweaving cells, gather around the injury site. But the most dramatic change involves the listless white cells. As if they have sense of smell (we still don’t know how they “sense” danger), nearby white cells abruptly halt their aimless wondering. Like beagles on the scent of a rabbit, they home in from all directions to the point of attack. Using their unique shape-changing qualities, they ooze between overlapping cells of capillary walls and hurry through tissue via the most direct route. When they arrive, the battle begins.” Excerpt from the book

#2. Specialization

There is no such thing as envy in your body. The word itself does not exist in its vocabulary. That is the exact opposite of what you do in your life. You become a deterrent to your happiness. How? You find trouble from wherever it is. You get jealous of a co-worker with another specialization. You forget your own specialization and leave the work undone.

Imagine if that were to happen to your body. You will simply be no more. While I am writing you this answer, if one specialization in my body says I am too tired and jealous of others to continue my work then you wouldn’t be reading my answer right now.

So, think of your body as composition of many parts that work as one. You have an ecstasy of community inside you. You rub your finger across your arm and you feel the stimulation of touch cells. Your touch cells would never abandon their jobs. If they did, you would not feel a touch of a loved one.

Do not tuck tail and run from your awareness of your body. Give the attention and respect it deserves. Crawl out of this bed of ignorance.

#3. Diversity

The cells in your body are the best teachers in the whole world. If you go to the end of the earth looking for the best teacher, you would not find a teacher who is cleverer than your own body.

Your own cells can teach you about families, groups, communities, villages and nations. In my country, Ethiopia we have more than 80 local languages. The language you are reading this answer is not among those languages. We are as diversified as can be. The cells in your body are as different as the sky is from Earth.

Your cells in all their diversity live a peaceful, war-free life. When you read this statement, you should turn over a new leaf when it comes to your body. Be relentless in taking care of this freely given gift.

You want to read an article on ‘how we fail spectacularly when we put human beings in the same basket’.

#4. Worth

Each of your body parts perform daily functions that keep you alive. No one inside your body says ‘I am too tired to do my task today’. Inside your body, nothing is seen as worthless. Each of the many members of your body are valuable and are often essential for your survival. That means, each of your body parts is worthy of something.

What do you do when you find someone who does few tasks and has little status in your organization? You replace him. Even if you do not replace him, you pay him less and you look down on him. There is no such thing as replacement in your body. Everything is worthy of something and all parts have equal status.

If that had not been the case, you know what will happen to you? Take the example of kidney failure. If the cells that keep kidney filters in repair fail, a person may soon die of toxic poisoning.

Your body’s division of labor is not based on status. Status is, in fact, immaterial to the task being performed. The body’s janitors are indispensable. If you doubt that, talk with someone who must go in for kidney dialysis twice a week.

#5. Unity

All parts of your body work congruently together to achieve one and only one goal, the proper function of you. Your body knows its hundred trillion cells by name. That is why when your body encounters something that it does not know by name, it goes into full-fetched war. You remember, the first heart transplant recipients who have died. They died because their bodies would not be fooled. Nature’s code of membership has been broken.

#6. Service

Each of your body parts provide you with an excellent service 24/7. They never say they are tired. They never lag behind in their service. They never stop providing you with the very best of themselves. The very least, you could do is take care of your own body so that you will not pay the price later on. You know the expression ‘too little too late’, it applies to your body as well. If you do not take care of your body while you have the chance, you will never get it back to its original beauty later on.

#7. Mutiny

Even your white blood cells that defend you against all enemy at their own cost can be the enemy themselves. If something is wrong inside a body, those dependable palace guards can destroy the body through rebellion. That is what happens when they recklessly reproduce resulting in cancer cells.

You must be like a dog with a bone when it comes to understanding of your own body. Don’t let go of it. Do everything in your power to make it as healthy as possible. And make it your first priority. Do not be like the fool who have been accumulating material possessions his entire life to find out later on, his one true possession ‘his health’ has gone out from his home through the window. He is gone so far from him that when the person calls him ‘where are you?’ its echoes are not heard even from planet Mars.

You and you alone hold the power to remember your body. No one can feed you the best recipe that is in the world if you do not take action. Try to be in a feeling of reverence and awe to the function of your body. You’ll quite literally be a better person.