Taking It For Granted.

"Was I bored? No, I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody-- you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to you, and you're bored with it. You've had the living body explained to you, and you're bored with it. You've had the universe explained to you, and you're bored with it. So now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn't matter how tawdry or vacuous they are, as long as it's new, as long as it flashes and fuckin' bleeps in forty fuckin' different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I'm not fuckin' bored." - Johnny "Naked" movie, 1993



So, my boyfriend and I were actually having a discussion earlier. It started with me saying, "you know what's cool? I'm talking to some of my Coffee Shop friends right now. Loads is in Australia, Cowgirl is in the UK, and I'm in the US, and we're all talking right now!" (Loads and Cowgirl are usernames, by the way).

Isn't that cool, though? Three people, in three completely different countries, talking at the same time, to each other. It's amazing what technology has done in the past few years. Computers weren't even invented until a few decades ago, and even then, they didn't have "Internet."

My boyfriend, who's training to be an EMT, said, "you wanna know what else is cool? The average heart rate is 60-100 beats per minute when resting, and it beats our whole lives. Think about how many beats that is, we live until about what, 70, 80? That's like, billions of beats." Probably more like trillions, but still lol.

In my Physical Anthropology book, which has a lot to do with biology, it says, "it is estimated that the entire human genome contains about 3 billion base pairs." When someone asks you what is inside of your body, you'd answer with something similar to, "muscles, blood, bones, organs, and a breakfast burrito." But when you think about it deeper, there are over 3 billion things inside of you, even if they are microscopic. The human body is a really amazing thing when you think about it.

And that's what I love about that quote, from Johnny. I found this quote a few years ago, and when I first read it, it made me realize just how much we take for granted nowadays. We have figured out what makes us work, what each organ does, how to fix things that go wrong. And not even just that, we've discovered different cells and genes and DNA and so much more that helps make us work.

But now, when we're in biology class, we're not fascinated by this. Why not? We have the answer to life right at our hands, in a book, that we're getting  for free (at least in high school) and what do we do? Wish class would end faster. How ignorant can we get? And when we get a new phone, or iPod, or a video game, we can explore those for hours. Not that how a cellphone works isn't interesting, but it's less interesting than how the human body works. In my opinion, at least.

Then there's the universe. The UNIVERSE! We haven't exactly figured that out yet, it's still one of the biggest mysteries to us, but we've gone so far in figuring out small things. Like the moon. We've been to the moon. These past few generations have been places and figured things out that our ancestors would never have thought possible. We've managed to launch ourselves into the sky, past the ozone layer, and onto the moon, and back down to Earth, safely. SAFELY. We've entered a non-oxygen territory, and came back alive! Not to mention all of the unknown things in the universe. Why doesn't this interest us like it should or used to?

We really take things for granted. You may be thankful for what you have, which is always good, but do you ever think about how you got it, where it came from, how it got there and what people had to do to make that, just so your life could be more convenient?

I'm a lurker on Yahoo! Answers, I go on and answer a bunch of questions for people that they could easily find out themselves if they learned of this awesome site called "Google," but that's not what I'm getting at. What I mean is that so many people ask such simple questions, like, "if I have sex without a condom but he pulls out, could I get pregnant?" This was taught to all of us in Sex Education class. But no, we didn't pay attention, did we? Or maybe you did, you're the good student.

Hell, we even know how to MAKE A HUMAN. Sperm and egg. They are not made of flesh, or bone, they're not little floating organs that just attach themselves and make a baby. They're small little cells, that form all of that stuff. Muscles and bones and skin and organs, made from two microscopic cells that live inside of us.

Are you fascinated yet? Because you should be. I could drag on with this for a while, but for the sake of the length of this post, I'll stop. For now :)

Just thought it was really funny :)