Day 18 and I'm feeling the need for a change of theme!
The humourist Tom Scott, once related a story about NZ Prime Minister David Lange back in the 1980s. They were sitting next to one another at some formal function, and Scott politely declined some food that was passed to him, saying "no thanks, my body is a temple". David Lange, known for his razor-sharp wit instantly responded with "pass it down here then, my body is a warehouse!"
Day | Tuesday 18th July |
|---|---|
Days without alcohol | 33 |
Funds raised | $3,007.66 (phew thanks folks) |
Badges earned | 2 weeks Dry |
I'm feeling | Re-energised |
Daily miracle
Lange passed away in 2005 at the not-very-old age of 63. At that time in New Zealand overall life expectancy was hovering just under 80 years, so poor David missed out on close to 20 years of life, statistically speaking.
My own father only made it to 72 and was considerably less healthy at that point than my father-in-law who passed just a couple of years ago with a great innings of nearly 96.
Despite all our technological prowess, we have yet to come close to replicating even the simplest forms of life, let alone something as complex as the human body, and probably we never will.
Our bodies are miracles of resilience. Each day trillions of new cells are being created to replace ones that are dying off. The bone marrow alone produces 200 to 300 billion new blood cells every day; the outermost layer of our skin, the epidermis, is completely replaced every month or so; our intestines, liver, lungs - basically everything - is constantly undergoing repair and maintenance.
It's like there's a gazillion microscopic Emmet Brickowskis constantly following the instructions to keep our finely-tuned metabolisms functioning so we can run, jump, hug the kids, eat, sleep or spend nine hours a day staring into a computer monitor.
We don't often appreciate what miraculous machines are bodies are. For the most part they can repair itself from all the damages we inflict on ourselves.
Basic Instinct
But as you can see from the different ages at which people pass, we're not all the same. Some of us get defective machinery to start off with. More people get something that is, well, average - good in parts but with some defective bits. A tiny proportion are built with extraordinary bodies that can be trained to achieve extraordinary feats such as climbing the highest mountains with no oxygen.
And all of us come pre-wired with a bunch of instincts that took us a few million years to evolve and can't be set aside easily just because we've had a paltry few thousand years of civilisation.
Which brings me to the point of today's post.
Like David Lange, my body is a warehouse. I adhere scrupulously to the indigenous proverb that says the best place to store surplus food is in someone's stomach, and it's a family trait.
The same unfortunately, applies to booze, 'cos it's food right? Plenty of calories there!
Habits
And habits are hard to break, but it's not impossible, we just need to understand what's going on.
And because we are also intelligent, we can understand the implications of doing or not doing something that will be good for us in the long term.
When I was young, I thought like a child, when I became a man, I put away childish things, supposedly. It took me years to start to behave like an adult and I'm not sure that I'm there yet.
How many of us are like this, and how much better would we all be if we all adulted a bit better?
So that's my 18th reason for doing Dry July. I just might live a bit longer.
And of course it's for a great cause that you can support by donating here.
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