Man's Inventions are the Real Miracle
Isabel P. Ball
November 25, 2005
One thing with my job is it allows me to be outside, literally beating the road almost daily in search for business. The freedom, seeing and feel of the outdoors, smell of flowers, the fumes of cars, aroma of food, meeting people, and as a form of exercise, are just few of the many benefits. The outside exposure also comes with encounters that make me ponder about life, and one particular thought-provoking incident I came across recently on a one beautiful November day, clear sky, sunshiny with sheen of moisture overhang in the atmosphere.
The big name outside of an office says Dialysis Center. I knew exactly what the facility provides in terms of service, apparent enough in the name. An overbearing curiosity more than the business purpose brought my eager feet inside, sidestepping for an elderly on a wheelchair, ushered in by a man from inside, courteously opening and leaving the door wide locked.
Inside, a table to the left, two women, appeared to have a formal conversation, and I was focused at looking at them. “You can talk to them,” one woman evidently an employee at the facility said to me motioning to the counter to my left. I have surmised that an interview of some sort was ongoing. I was surprised to have missed seeing the office window, which was perhaps small for my detail-dull eyesight.
Gawking, I peeped inside. Suddenly, a strong, obnoxious, smell of medicine or something overcame me. Reactively, I moved my head back, but soon regained my composure. Instantly, an understanding dawned on me that the waft in the air was related to the medical servicing done to the many patients inside hooked by some tube to the dialysis machine. The scene stirred up a recall, the plight of an endeared relative in the Philippines whose life is artificially prolonged by a dialysis machine for many years now. In spite of the prohibitive cost, the will to live on attests to the importance of life to us, and preserving it is a moral, if not an integral priority. Shortly, a medical worker appeared at the window, obviously busy accommodated me. “Busy, huh?” I said. “Always busy, in fact,” she affirmed.
With the brief business preview done away, and I was back on the street, walking on, this time, reflectively. My mind swirled with philosophical thoughts, circumspective about existence, and the precious and fragile essence we call life. No longer was I contemplative about life being precious, because it is evident among us, rather I was awestruck by the realization from the sight at the facility, that our life-- biblically claimed borrowed--very temporal, which remains a fact, can be prolonged, whimsically and financially up to certain point. Feasibly, man's life-extenuating inventions are something that our minds are anymore oblivious about or simply taken for granted until that fateful day, when after some personal debacle or health setback occurs, and life is left at the mercy of a manmade solution of medicine and machines.
Towards sustaining and extending life, man has indeed done leaps and bounds in creativity that led to many inventions. Within our hand, lies a power to extend life, and has been happening, since time immemorial--when people first attempted to save themselves from any life-threatening accidents or diseases. Medicine, either homeopathic or laboratory produced, was invented. Since then, our mortality clocks have been manipulated to commonly survive any death attacks of diseases or injuries. Nowadays, it is common that peoples’ lives are being continually saved through prompt rescue and proper medicine at the emergency rooms of the hospitals.
At the dialysis center, starkly, the man-made machines--effectively provided an added lease to the lives of the many terminally ill patients, whose kidneys can no longer perform the normal task in the physiological process of safeguarding the toxic waste in the body from contaminating the entire system. Needless to say, such invention and countless others, depict man’s brilliance. In them, I witness a real miracle happening, factual, palpable, effective in bringing back to normalcy, if not less, health aberrations we suffer somehow in the course of our life.
In the dark ages, and prior eons, peoples’ general precepts were characteristically fatalistic, that life pruned by accidents or illnesses were acts of god. Until man’s intelligence surfaces, which begets enlightenment, and much of life’s puzzles, like the Da Vinci Code, was decoded, and more and more miracles are unfolding before us.
So, philosophically, life in its utmost nature is subjective, and its span is made relative to technology and to the period it flourished. In our time, we are blessed to be living in such proliferation of inventions that truly perform miracles. Impressive and mind-boggling, these inventions are to me, and truly eye-opener of the prodigious intellectual power man possess. Just imagine seeing people of pre-technological era view such miracles; they would have been in delirious, fanatical, entranced, and possessed awe!
The big name outside of an office says Dialysis Center. I knew exactly what the facility provides in terms of service, apparent enough in the name. An overbearing curiosity more than the business purpose brought my eager feet inside, sidestepping for an elderly on a wheelchair, ushered in by a man from inside, courteously opening and leaving the door wide locked.
Inside, a table to the left, two women, appeared to have a formal conversation, and I was focused at looking at them. “You can talk to them,” one woman evidently an employee at the facility said to me motioning to the counter to my left. I have surmised that an interview of some sort was ongoing. I was surprised to have missed seeing the office window, which was perhaps small for my detail-dull eyesight.
Gawking, I peeped inside. Suddenly, a strong, obnoxious, smell of medicine or something overcame me. Reactively, I moved my head back, but soon regained my composure. Instantly, an understanding dawned on me that the waft in the air was related to the medical servicing done to the many patients inside hooked by some tube to the dialysis machine. The scene stirred up a recall, the plight of an endeared relative in the Philippines whose life is artificially prolonged by a dialysis machine for many years now. In spite of the prohibitive cost, the will to live on attests to the importance of life to us, and preserving it is a moral, if not an integral priority. Shortly, a medical worker appeared at the window, obviously busy accommodated me. “Busy, huh?” I said. “Always busy, in fact,” she affirmed.
With the brief business preview done away, and I was back on the street, walking on, this time, reflectively. My mind swirled with philosophical thoughts, circumspective about existence, and the precious and fragile essence we call life. No longer was I contemplative about life being precious, because it is evident among us, rather I was awestruck by the realization from the sight at the facility, that our life-- biblically claimed borrowed--very temporal, which remains a fact, can be prolonged, whimsically and financially up to certain point. Feasibly, man's life-extenuating inventions are something that our minds are anymore oblivious about or simply taken for granted until that fateful day, when after some personal debacle or health setback occurs, and life is left at the mercy of a manmade solution of medicine and machines.
Towards sustaining and extending life, man has indeed done leaps and bounds in creativity that led to many inventions. Within our hand, lies a power to extend life, and has been happening, since time immemorial--when people first attempted to save themselves from any life-threatening accidents or diseases. Medicine, either homeopathic or laboratory produced, was invented. Since then, our mortality clocks have been manipulated to commonly survive any death attacks of diseases or injuries. Nowadays, it is common that peoples’ lives are being continually saved through prompt rescue and proper medicine at the emergency rooms of the hospitals.
At the dialysis center, starkly, the man-made machines--effectively provided an added lease to the lives of the many terminally ill patients, whose kidneys can no longer perform the normal task in the physiological process of safeguarding the toxic waste in the body from contaminating the entire system. Needless to say, such invention and countless others, depict man’s brilliance. In them, I witness a real miracle happening, factual, palpable, effective in bringing back to normalcy, if not less, health aberrations we suffer somehow in the course of our life.
In the dark ages, and prior eons, peoples’ general precepts were characteristically fatalistic, that life pruned by accidents or illnesses were acts of god. Until man’s intelligence surfaces, which begets enlightenment, and much of life’s puzzles, like the Da Vinci Code, was decoded, and more and more miracles are unfolding before us.
So, philosophically, life in its utmost nature is subjective, and its span is made relative to technology and to the period it flourished. In our time, we are blessed to be living in such proliferation of inventions that truly perform miracles. Impressive and mind-boggling, these inventions are to me, and truly eye-opener of the prodigious intellectual power man possess. Just imagine seeing people of pre-technological era view such miracles; they would have been in delirious, fanatical, entranced, and possessed awe!
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