Recovery, please arrive swiftly, as I am not myself

As I am in the depths of my usual pre-Christmas incapacitating killer flu, I reflect upon how much nature has a grip on how we think and what we are. My mood and my ability to function normally by doing everyday things like thinking and reacting and talking and cooking are seriously compromised by what is probably a simple cold. But this brings me to think about how we are inevitably controlled by the factors of nature -- from birth to death and everything in between.