The thought for the day....

I have been taking advantage of my new found free time to do some things that I normally wouldn't take the time to do. Yesterday I visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science. I saw a billboard advertising an exhibit entitled "Body Worlds 3" that caught my eye. The image on the billboard was that of a person stripped of their skin, muscles and ligaments showing. It looked too interesting to pass up, so I made the trip to the museum to check it out. WOW! This was both incredibly fascinating and horridly bizarre all at the same time. A German anatomist has perfected the technique of preserving the human body; bones, muscles, tendons, organs, eyes...you name it. He takes parts of the human anatomy and illustrates the God given wonder of this incredible machine. This part of the exhibit was pretty tame. The bizarre part comes in where he poses an entire body into various artist forms. Remember > this is a real person, preserved for your viewing entertainment! One "plastinate" as they are called was a man who was stripped of his skin, exposing his inner body. The twist was that he was holding his own skin in one piece, head to toes (literally), in an outstretched hand! I must admit I was completely in awe of the exhibit.

Check it out online at www.hmns.org, click on "Body Worlds 3". There are several links, click on Plastination to learn more about the process. Cool stuff...

During the tour I noticed a quote on a large banner that was a part of the exhibit. It was from the Greek philosopher Epikur, and it states:

Accustom yourself to the thought that death does not concern us. For everything good and bad is based on perception. Death, however, is the loss of perception.…Thus the most dreadful evil, death, does not concern us; since as long as we exist, death is not there and when death is there, we do not exist anymore.

Epikur, Greek philosopher (341 - 271 B.C.)

Now; take the time to clear your brain and re-read the above quote. Think about it...this summarizes what I've talked about in my blog before. It's taken me some time to get to the point where I do not fear death. It is a part of the natural cycle of life. Furthermore, I've come to see life as merely a waiting room on our planet Earth. If you a believer, you know there is a life thereafter, in a land where there is no pain, there is no suffering, there is no cancer, where the streets are paved with gold and every day is a good day. What's so bad about that? Think about it. Till next time, Brian...