Writing from the body
This is the first homework for a new course I'm doing at the Writing School:
SATURN RETURNS
“Whatever your age, your body is many years younger. In fact, even if you're middle aged,
most of you may be just 10 years old or less.”
So proclaimed a New York Times article in 2005. I’m sure we’ve all heard of this idea,
which arises from the fact that most of the body's tissues are under constant renewal. That
turns out to be not completely true as a few of the body's cell types endure from birth to
death without renewal, and this special minority includes some or all of the cells of the
cerebral cortex. But the average age of cells in the main body of the gut is 15.9 years, the
cells lining the stomach last only five days and red blood cells, bruised and battered after
traveling nearly 1,000 miles through the maze of the body's circulatory system, last only
120 days. An adult human liver probably has a turnover time of 300 to 500 days, and the
entire human skeleton is thought to be replaced every 10 years or so in adults. So why do
we die? Current thinking is that stem cells themselves age and become less capable of
generating progeny in the long term.
I’m not much interested in the science but the concept of impermanence is one I find more
and more helpful as I age. I have a sense of how many people I have been in my lifetime,
and how I am not them now. A terrible medical thing happened to me in 2005, which
most of my body has overcome and moved on from on, by its cells literally dying. So am I
anymore that person?
The hippies in the 70s used to talk about Saturn Returns. This is the astrological idea that
our lives are governed by planetary movements. Saturn "returns" coincide with the time it
takes the planet Saturn to make one orbit around the sun about 29.4 years. It is believed
by astrologers that, as Saturn "returns" to the degree in its orbit occupied at the time of
birth, a person crosses over a major threshold and enters the next stage of life. With the
first Saturn return, at ages 28-31, a person leaves youth behind and enters adulthood.
With the second return, ages 56-60, we reach maturity. And with the third, and usually
final, return at 84-90 years a person enters wise old age. It’s not difficult to look back at
my life and divide it successfully into these four periods and for me to feel that the person
I was in the first quarter is so different from me now in the third, that it is hard to remember
how you felt, what you believed, and what you cared about. I don’t find this a negative,
as generally I am a much happier person in this quadrant than I have ever been, but the
cell research makes me wonder if we integrate our past persons or if they do actually, like
cells, ‘die’ to us.
SATURN RETURNS
“Whatever your age, your body is many years younger. In fact, even if you're middle aged,
most of you may be just 10 years old or less.”
So proclaimed a New York Times article in 2005. I’m sure we’ve all heard of this idea,
which arises from the fact that most of the body's tissues are under constant renewal. That
turns out to be not completely true as a few of the body's cell types endure from birth to
death without renewal, and this special minority includes some or all of the cells of the
cerebral cortex. But the average age of cells in the main body of the gut is 15.9 years, the
cells lining the stomach last only five days and red blood cells, bruised and battered after
traveling nearly 1,000 miles through the maze of the body's circulatory system, last only
120 days. An adult human liver probably has a turnover time of 300 to 500 days, and the
entire human skeleton is thought to be replaced every 10 years or so in adults. So why do
we die? Current thinking is that stem cells themselves age and become less capable of
generating progeny in the long term.
I’m not much interested in the science but the concept of impermanence is one I find more
and more helpful as I age. I have a sense of how many people I have been in my lifetime,
and how I am not them now. A terrible medical thing happened to me in 2005, which
most of my body has overcome and moved on from on, by its cells literally dying. So am I
anymore that person?
The hippies in the 70s used to talk about Saturn Returns. This is the astrological idea that
our lives are governed by planetary movements. Saturn "returns" coincide with the time it
takes the planet Saturn to make one orbit around the sun about 29.4 years. It is believed
by astrologers that, as Saturn "returns" to the degree in its orbit occupied at the time of
birth, a person crosses over a major threshold and enters the next stage of life. With the
first Saturn return, at ages 28-31, a person leaves youth behind and enters adulthood.
With the second return, ages 56-60, we reach maturity. And with the third, and usually
final, return at 84-90 years a person enters wise old age. It’s not difficult to look back at
my life and divide it successfully into these four periods and for me to feel that the person
I was in the first quarter is so different from me now in the third, that it is hard to remember
how you felt, what you believed, and what you cared about. I don’t find this a negative,
as generally I am a much happier person in this quadrant than I have ever been, but the
cell research makes me wonder if we integrate our past persons or if they do actually, like
cells, ‘die’ to us.
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