The Paradox of the Human Body

Yesterday morning around 7 A.M. the sound of sirens leaked into my window. At the intersection just up the street from my house, a woman had been killed. She was crossing the street on her way to work, and, in the darkness, was struck by a 49-year-old man driving a GMC truck. She was a single mom, and later, when the police interviewed her three daughters, ages 12, 14, and 16, they were told that she had been walking to work because the brakes in their car were broken.
When I first heard this story, I was in shock. I stared at that intersection, now busy with cars full of people rushing off to buy milk or to get home to their families after a long day of work, and could only think about how a woman had died there this morning. But the ground was not sacred. At least not to them. They drove over it again and again, completely ignorant of the life-shattering moment that had occurred there only hours earlier.
Imagining a truck striking a fragile human body fills me with pain. It's like imagining a sledge hammer coming down on a piece of ancient pottery, the brute and unrelenting force crushing the delicate structure. It's not a fair fight. I can almost feel the way the internal organs would be crushed, unable to withstand the pressure of impact, and the way the skin would tear and bruise, leaking out its red contents. The human body is so delicate. So very, very delicate.
I can't help remembering the bodies of babies I saw in the ICU, resting in incubators next to my brother's. They were so small and so utterly helpless, like baby birds confined to their nests. Or the time I went cliff jumping and landed wrong when I hit the water, earning myself a bruise the size of a cantaloupe. I couldn't stop staring at my raised purple and blue flesh, feeling my nerves scream when I brushed my fingertips ever so lightly across the surface. I apologized to my body. I'm sorry I did this to you, I said. I'm sorry.
But the body is a funny thing. It's amazing that the same set of DNA, the same set of arms and legs and muscles and bones can carry my little brother on my back all the way up to Timpanogas Cave, but is completely wiped out by a microscopic virus. It's amazing how the same body can climb to the top of the highest mountain in the entire world, surviving on minimal amounts of oxygen, but can die from a blood clot the size of a nickel.
If given enough time, the body can adapt to almost anything. The muscles in our bodies rise to meet the challenges presented to them, tearing themselves apart and rebuilding over and over again until they are at last strong enough to resist what resists them.
The body is a paradox. It is durable and delicate, sensitive and tough. It can adapt and it can demand.
It is an amazing piece of work.
Sometimes I think it's easy to criticize our bodies. We get so lost in the wrapping, in the way our hair falls around our shoulders, the shape of our nose, or the color of our eyes. It's easy to become angry at our bodies for not looking or acting the way we want them to. We forget so easily. We forget what a gift our bodies are. We forget how much they can do. Bodies are precious. They deserve our awe and they deserve our respect. And most of all, a body deserves protection—even if it isn't our own.