"With each injury you learn how that patch of you feels. It wakens. Until it heals, you're aware of those nerves.

"This is a privilege?"

"Of course. Every place you injure adds that patch to your consciousness. You grow more alive. And that point of all this is...that when you have hurt every single place on your body, you die! Once you have felt every last nerve ending, at least on your skin, then you have lived in full awareness. Then you die."

-Annie Dillard, The Maytrees