A talk on “My Skeleton” helped me appreciate how my bones are a time capsule. I am aware that my bones capture a story of my past 82 years. They are my own personal time capsule. My bones also tell the story of the several hundred million years during which the configuration of my skeleton has evolved. My bones tell the story of the creature I have become, and perhaps hint of the future as well.
My bones capture it all, in addition to giving shape and support to what I have become. My bones tell a story that goes back to fishes swimming in an ancient sea several hundred million years ago. Paleontologists outline the bony traces of how the structures in those ancient fish foreshadowed my bones. Those ancient bones in fish gradually evolved into the many bones we see today in all bony animals including me. My skeleton tells the story that captures the millions of years bones have evolved. My skeleton is a time capsule that spans many millennia.
In my view, my skeleton captures time in such a way that time no longer has meaning to my mind. It is hard for my conceptual mind to understand what those hundred million years are like. The best I can do is think of the rapid changes that took place in my yet unborn body as I developed in my mother’s womb. I think of how those rapid developmental changes in the fetus hint at and reflect those dramatic modifications that took place in the evolution of bones in bony animals.
There are faint hints in my skeleton of what the future might involve. My knees are no longer functioning well and may need to be replaced. There is foreshadowing of the future in my bones, just as the fins of bony fish many millions of years ago foreshadowed all the unseen skeletal limbs yet to come.
It all blends together in my bones. My bones capture time, and they also capture my connection to all other creatures with bones. My bones bring together materials from the far reaches of the universe. All is inter connected, an expression of interning. My bones are not just a capsule of time. My bones are a capsule of all that time touches. My bones tell me a story of all that I can perceive.