Like some of my clients, do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with self doubt and in need of a boost in confidence and self acceptance? Well, why not stop for a minute and think about your body and how amazing you are. At the first level you know it is made of a framework of bone and muscle that houses the major organs such as your brain, heart, stomach and lungs.
And you’ll no doubt know that all of these things are made up of cells which in turn are made of chemicals and molecules. And ultimately you’ll be aware that all of these parts of your body are made of atoms. Atoms like carbon, oxygen, calcium and iron. But very few of us ever stop to think how those atoms were made in the first place and where they come from? It’s an amazing story! You are amazing!
At the beginning of the universe, 14 billion years ago there was only one type of atom: hydrogen. Vast clouds of hydrogen drifted together under the mysterious force of gravity, forming gigantic balls of gas which we know as stars – the hydrogen burning and fusing together to form helium, giving off immense heat and light in the process. Ultimately all the energy on earth comes from this single reaction, the conversion of hydrogen to helium in our star, the sun.
Over millions of years, as the first stars started to collapse in on themselves, the helium atoms started to compress together. All the other atoms in the universe have been created within the enormous heat and pressure that only exists at the heart of a dying star – until it finally explodes scattering stardust out across space. That’s where the atoms that make up your body were made. You are literally made of stardust.
In the billions of years since they were created, the atoms that form your body today have been many things. Sometimes they have been part of inanimate things like rocks and earth and stone. Sometimes they have been in living things like grass and trees, animals and insects. Some have even been in manufactured items like clothing and furniture. One day soon they will be all these things again. But for the moment, in the tiniest blink of time that you will live, they are uniquely you. Never before and never again in the history of the universe will they be combined in the way they are now.
