Autobiography of a Red Blood Cell

(Readers are advised to read the complete article, as the key message  conveyed in the end can be appreciated only after going through the initial paragraphs)

I was born from the realms of the bone marrow. I keep moving and every few minutes, I reach the lungs, where all the carbon dioxide that I carry, goes away from my body and fresh oxygen molecules cling to me. From here I start my journey but I do not decide where to go. The pressure on me increases, after I reach the heart. Like faithful soldiers, we are sent off to different parts of the body to deliver oxygen to the cells. Sometimes I have to go long distances and sometimes not too far. When we are going with the flow, our surrounding temperature is regulated by the liver, which also gives sugars and other chemicals, which are our comrades, till we reach our destination. As soon as we reach a starving cell, the sugar which traveled with us is taken by the cell and oxygen from us. When we give away Oxygen, the cells give us carbon dioxide to us to take back to the lungs. We complete our mission in less than a minute. Sometimes we have seen that our friends go away from the body. This happens, if there is a cut and then some of us are knocked out.

I tirelessly carry oxygen from the lungs to different parts of the body and return to the lungs with carbon dioxide. In each leg of the journey, I travel through the heart twice. After doing this for about 120 days, I breakdown and part of my remains get converted as bile and stored in the gall bladder. My friends and I do not fight over on who is doing a better job. We do not ask the destination, where we want to carry oxygen or say that one of us like to travel to the brain or do not want to go the the skin on the foot, where it is very cold.

During my life span, I encounter many environments. I never decide, what i should do, but what ever i am made to do, i do it. Let me also tell you that all of us do not end as bile in the gall bladder. Some of us come out of the body, if there is a cut we die when we dry up. Some of us are taken out and stored and then used in other bodies. They call that blood bank.

I am very small compared  to the whole you, but you are not too different, compared to the cosmos.Just as I am , but a small component of your living body, so are you a very small part of the cosmos. Our similarities are many, but there is a lot of difference in the way we think.

You think, you are master of your destiny and you can plan, control many things. I live my life and go with the flow. I do what I am supposed to do. Both of us do not decide, when we are born, nor do we know, when, how and where our end will be.

So learn a simple lesson from us- Go with the flow and your creator will take care of you