A skin cell does many vital jobs over the course of it’s life. It is arguably part of the more defensive oriented aspects of our biological economy but it also plays many nourishing roles like producing Vitamin D. Each cell lives and dies, in part, to nourish and protect the whole body that gave birth to it and nourished and protected it to maturity. Skin cells share a common legacy with all cells, to serve nourishing and, or defensive roles in relation to the community, whose integrity depends on enough of that shared value for the interdependent community to survive. T
The whole process for a skin cell takes around 6 weeks, from being “born”, to being pushed up through the layers in about 4 weeks, to dying and serving, even in death, for about two weeks as part of the stratum corneum. (Outer layer of skin) Other cells in our body live much longer, but all that are valuable contributors (not antagonistic to the body) are also oriented toward the purpose of nourishing and defending the community which also nourishes and defends them.
This statement, made through this biological economy, happens on many scales. his is true of cells, organs, an organism, a species and an ecosystem. There is a sufficient commitment to nourish and defend the integrity of the system in order for it to flourish.
Each of us gets to carry the torch of living fire in the community we live in and depend on for life. In fact; the difference between a significant life and a meaningless life depends on whether or not we find and express a constructive role – leaving something more constructive in our wake than the sacrifices required for us to be here. We are an expression of hunger to find our place in the community of relationships and cultivate something fruitful in that context. This act requires sacrifice but also pays dividends greater than the sacrifice. Cultivation is the purpose written into the structure of our being. Every organelle, cell and organ must contribute to the community it lives in and depends on for life; so must our lives be oriented around this natural hunger in order be satisfied.
This understanding and the constructive expression of significance is the key to a satisfied life. We are biologically wired to be satisfied by finding and expressing our nourishing and/or defensive role in the context of the community. This is why we never meet anyone who is both malignantly selfish to the parasitic and predatory exclusion of others, and satisfied at the same time. This move toward constructive significance makes the difference between a frustrated existence, and one more reflective of our role to support the relationship economy on which we all depend for our present and our future. This value system is also the way evolution makes selective decisions about what will continue forward in time, and what will be selected out.
I could be missing something(s)
The Integumentary System, Part 1 – Skin Deep
The Wisdom Of Life 