Your Body

Your body is not a thing you have, like a book or a car. It is the thing you are — all of it alive, all of it you. It has been with you from your first day, and it will be with you to the end.

The things it does on its own

You do not tell your body to breathe. It breathes when you sleep; it breathes when you think about other things. You are breathing now — did you feel it? Now you do.

Inside you there is a part that pushes your blood around your body, about one time each moment. It started pushing before your first day, and it has not stopped one time from then to now. Put your ear on another person's body and you can hear it working.

You were very small one time. Your body grew, year after year, and it knew how to do this on its own. No one showed it.

It puts things right

If you hurt your arm, you do not have to tell your body what to do. It knows. It starts putting the hurt place right, and after some days, the hurt is gone. If the hurt is very big, or if your body is not well and cannot put things right on its own, there are people who have learned how to help it: doctors.

Its parts, from top to bottom

Your head holds your eyes, your ears, your nose, and your mouth. Your eyes see. Your ears hear. Your mouth is for food and for words, and for tasting: it knows sweet from sour before you think about it. Your nose knows things your eyes cannot see: it can tell you there is bread near before you see the bread.

Your arms and hands take things, hold things, and make things. Your legs carry you from place to place, and your feet know the ground. You have two of most of these things, which is good: if one ear does not hear well, the other one helps.

Being good to it

Your body wants easy things: food, water, sleep, and moving about. It likes to move — it was made for going about on legs, for lifting things, and for playing. A body that moves is a happy body, and most of the time, a healthy one.

Your body holds some fat inside it. This is not bad: it is food that your body put to one side, for days when there is no food. A long time before now, this was one of the most important things a body could do.

Be good to your body. Give it what it wants, and it will carry you for many years. It is the only one you will be given.