Random Thought #3: Clocking up the miles

Nowadays, things are built to last a few years if at all. Digital cameras have a life span of a couple of years before they need to be replaced and a really well-built car can make it through a decade if it's well looked after.

All the more astonishing that nature builds things which are so much more durable than that.

When hanging out with my son the other day I looked at his tiny feet and legs and couldn't help but thinking how miraculous human beings are.

It reminded me that I had recently dug out a very old picture of mine as a toddler which showed me sitting in the mountains in shorts and I looked down my own legs and thought how funny it was that I still had the same legs that were pictured some 30+ years ago and how well they had served me over the years.

If you think about it, the human physiology is quite amazing. Our baby, being born very recently, has hopefully a realistic chance of living into the next century, which still is more then 90 years in the future. By then, his heart will have beat millions of times, his legs will have carried him thousands of miles and his brain will have stored tons of information and hopefully a lot of pleasant memories.

The sheer fact of such a complex biological system being able to function for that amount of time is something that I think is quite hard to understand, but it makes you appreciate how precious it is.

And once you appreciate that, it makes disregard for life which unfortunately seems so rife in so many things you read and see nowadays, so much more incomprehensible.