Body Worlds

Last weekend I went to the Body Worlds exhibit. See here. It's an amazing exploration of the human body, using actual corpses that have been preserved using a process of plastination. The bodies are posed as athletes--an archer pulling back a bow and arrow, dancers mid-lift, a runner soaring over a hurdle--and show the complex muscles, nerves, organs, and veins that make our bodies work.

Stripped of the things that make up outward appearance, I was struck by the beauty of the human body. Everything works together so well! At one point, we walked through a room filled with huge barrels that represented the amount of blood our heart pumps in a day--incredible!

At the end of the exhibit there was a wall filled with "body secrets" that attendees had written anonymously on cards; people wrote stuff about hating their butts, anorexia, cutting, and drug abuse. So many heartbreaking confessions!

If only we could love the complicated inside parts of us, without allowing our complicated feelings about our outsides to get in the way, wouldn't we all feel much happier about ourselves?

Yes!!!