My Body Is A Democracy

There are around 30 trillion human cells in my body, and yours. Can you imagine how many cells that is? The larger-than-average galaxy of the Milky Way is about 100 billion stars (and that’s not counting the planets). That means there are 300 Galaxies of human cells in our bodies! There are only 8.3 billion people on this planet. And get this: besides the human cells, there are another 30 trillion or so more cells that are bacteria and viruses living in the microbiome of the gut. Every day, every moment some cellular life dies, and some is newly born. Every cell, busy living its life inside mine, is less than ten years old.

New cellular organisms arrive in each meal I eat, immigrants arriving at the Ellis Island of my mouth, many others through the airports of my lungs, and through the sunny borders of my skin. Processing occurs locally, or after transport through my alimentary canals and bloodstream to deliver and receive nourishment and resources. But also, maybe some arrive just to have a good time and visit friends, or travel around and take in the views. They bring all kinds of organismic friends and family with them, gaily tossing themselves hither and yon, shedding and scooping up DNA and RNA, and all the while swirling viral bits of information patterning everywhere.

Together this vast and vital nation of biological life cheerfully keeps my heart beating, my lungs breathing, my gut digesting, my suit of skin containing it all, so that I can move around in the bigger world being a person, relating to people.

What is the patterning that keeps my eyes blue, my toes stubby, the scar on my knee from surgery when I was seven? Where is the constitution and the writ of law that keeps me in a recognizable shape year after year, for decades. Where is the government that organizes these countless generations of trillions of cells who keep my life living?

The executive and judicial hemispheres of my brain collaborate on how I feed myself. At my birthday lunch, I can eat as much of the carrot cake as I want, layered thickly with buttercream frosting, and sleep it off in the afternoon. My cellular life handles the joyful onslaught of fat and sugar. The congress of my nervous system, dorsal and ventral, regulates how I ride rhythms of activity and rest as I chase the small grandchild democracies, brunch with neighborhood democracies and republics, and enjoy a pair of visiting monarchies. My international relations policies allow me to connect in the small moments, to make spontaneous moves to appreciate, to savor tenderness, and to be courageous and sturdy in my own integrity.

I do know that small cancers, insurgents among groups of cells, wink and bloom intermittently, sometimes challenging and invigorating established patterning in my body. None have threatened my life yet. Their presence is evidence of creative yearning and effort in reciprocal tension with resilience and collaborative adaptability, which is fundamental to democracy. They govern themselves, my cells, working it all out, one way or another; the patterning of me seems to exist in each one of them.

How does that pattern become established, over and over again, in all of those trillions of cells that arrive from elsewhere? How do the mushrooms, green beans, potatoes and chicken that I prepare for dinner become the heart cells that synchronize and keep my heart beating, day in, day out. Or the bone marrow cells that produce new stem cells that will go anywhere, to be one of my liver, kidney or brain cells? That’s some remarkably complex cooperation and collaboration for their own health and wellbeing and for mine.

When you and I share lunch at the corner bistro, those plant and animal cells naturalize to become citizens of you and citizens of me, right? High school biology was a long time ago for me, but I’ve been reading books and watching movies since then; physiological processes aren’t that different from human group dynamics, international relations, and the music of cosmic spheres. We live in a world of fractal resonance; even google is just a version of our own information retrieval patterns.

Here’s what google says: “Fractal resonance refers to the phenomenon of self-similar patterns repeating across different scales, creating a coherent and interconnected whole. While the term can be used in various fields, it most often describes a theoretical framework for understanding reality…based on fractal patterns that connect everything from subatomic particles to cosmic structures, and even human consciousness… The concept is used to describe how systems like the brain, respiratory system, and circulatory system are organized in fractal patterns, where smaller parts mirror the structure of the whole.” (Bold emphasis added by me.)

Human beings in a democracy, and cellular life in our bodies demonstrate willing cooperation and collaboration on the project of health and wellbeing, for self, for others, for the whole. Government of the constituents, by the constituents, for the constituents. No matter which whole you’re talking about. Even my dear little ego up here at the apparent helm of my life really has no idea how all of these trillions of cells make it all happen. I’m just deeply grateful that it does.

I trust our human collective, and my cellular collective, to thrive, to diverge and adapt, swerve and ramble, as needed, willingly, devotedly democratic, moment by moment.

On election day, I read again a quote from Abraham Lincoln as he stood at the cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, asking his fellow Americans to rededicate themselves “to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The resonance of this devotion in our shared patterns of willing cooperation and collaboration vibrates throughout our bodies and throughout nature, including all those hacking away at the coherent patterning to test its vitality and incite creative adaptation. Our new birth of freedom is happening hourly, moment by moment, on every scale imaginable, throughout All That Is.

Is it messy? Yes. Are we still willing to cooperate and collaborate in resonant coherence? Yes. Watch for it everywhere and trust it, alive and thriving, in your own body.