Inside Of You

When you think about it, your body is home to a collection of microbial organisms living, breathing, multiplying, crawling, and dying inside of you. You are a collection of other organisms. You are just a guest in your own body with other guests. We don’t own this body. Nature and its biochemistry owns it.

We may be classified as a single organism but we aren’t really. We have about 39 trillion microbial cells, bacteria, viruses and fungi that live on and in us. It’s crazy; they are here as you read those words and as I write them. They are probably too busy digesting, syntesizing, absorbing, and protecting us.

It might seem intimidating to share our bodies with little guys, as we humans often have trouble sharing anything, let alone our very own bodies. So how are we going to sharing ourselves with trillions of organisms?

To Be Human

Because to be human, is to accept that we have to share. We have to share our food, water, air, soil, and bodies. We have to share information, culture, love and every human dimension we gather. We have to offer to take back. Always.

Makers Of Us

As long as we interact with other organisms, there will be life, within us and outside of us. We interact with our microbiota as we interact with our environment. They both make us. They empower us and guide us. With microbes in our gut, whales in our waters, and daisies in our gardens, we are a community.