I heard an interesting statistic on Public Radio a couple of days ago. It seems that the number of microbes living in a human body is actually greater than the number of human cells.
Not only are our cells outnumbered by microbes, but they are outnumbered by a factor of ten to one.
Of course, we may represent the majority of *mass*, but then since we're 70% water, I suppose they could lay claim to that liquid as easily as we. In fact, it seems, we are less individual organisms and more walking holiday camps for bacteria and other little life-forms.
All of which is rather sobering.
Another interesting fact I stumbled across was that bacteria are, in effect, immortal. They never die of old age. It seems that as a by product of the way they reproduce, they never developed any mechanism for an 'internal clock' to regulate their age. If they had, then their strategy of making exact copies of themselves to reproduce would mean the entire species would die of old age in a single generation.
So, here I find myself, outnumbered and out gunned. The better part of me, numerically speaking, isn't even me as I would like to define it (human, sentient, English. No, they are not mutually exclusive.)
Nevertheless taken as a whole, I am, generally speaking, immortal. I suppose there's some comfort there. I may die in a some car crash this very evening or be hit by a runaway train while gardening, but somehow, somewhere, I'll still be floating around, a growing swarm of hungry little single-cell horrors.
I'll close by quoting Rupert Brookes, a poet who died, like many of his generation, in the battlefield of Europe during the Great War.
"If I should die, think only this of me; that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England. There shall be, in that rich earth, a richer dust concealed."
And a squirming, microbe laden dust it will be.