The next time you feel like life sucks - like your life has no meaning - I want you to think about something. You are a miracle. Your mere existence defies every law of probability known.
(Warning: The following contains some very large numbers. I have specifically left every zero in these numbers to illustrate the scale I am trying to convey. Using the mere words numbers fails to relay the scale properly.
In the grand scale of things, we can look at the universe to show us how truly special we are. Our star is fairly unremarkable. It is neither the largest, smallest, hottest, or coldest star known. It is just one of the between 200,000,000,000 and 400,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy alone. Now, scientists have said that there are probably as many as 100,000,000,000 galaxies in our observable universe (That just means the part of the universe we can see. There's no telling how much we can't). Let's say that every galaxy has 200,000,000,000 stars in it, that means that there could be 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (20 sextillion) stars in the observable universe, and conservatively let's say that each star has 5 planets (we know some such as our own have more, others have fewer or none, but we're estimating here). That means, of the roughly 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (100 sextillion) planets in our observable universe you were born here on Earth. That is a 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance. That by itself is incredible. That is 357,142,857,142,857,143 times less likely than getting struck by lightning. One would think that such an even would almost never happen, I mean the chance of getting hit by lightning is 1 in 280,000, and it is considered rare enough that we use it as a benchmark for when things are exceedingly unlikely to happen. Yet somehow, it has happened enough that there are 6,769,947,363 individuals who have had it happen to them alive on our planet right now (number from the US Census Bureau estimates as of 05:23 GMT Mar 30, 2009).
Perhaps you somehow believe that we are alone in this universe. You believe that there is no life anywhere in this unimaginably large universe other than the life that exists on our tiny orb. If that is true, then it was no mere happenstance that you were born on earth. There was nowhere else for you to pop out. How then can I argue that you are special if there was no other place for you to be born? Recall I earlier mentioned that there is a microscopic scale to this argument.
As a human, your body is composed of cells, and the makeup of each of these cells is determined by your DNA. Each strand of human DNA is composed of 220,000,000 base pairs of amino acids, the sequence of these pairs determines who you are. Your gender, skin color, eye color, hair color, figure, height, etc. etc. etc. – Everything that you are is determined by the sequence of these base pairs. Change a few key sequences, and you would be a completely different person. No two people in the world share the exact DNA (identical twins are close, but even they have some extremely small differences). So yes, you are unique, but how does that make you special? Well consider this, we inherit our DNA from our parents, and through the magic of reproduction, no two couplings produce the same mix of genetic material.
Think about it this way, in every ejaculation there are an average of 300,000,000 sperm. You are the product of just one of those sperm fertilizing an egg, but if it had been any of the other 300,000,000 sperm, you would be a different person. So you are the product of a 1/300,000,000 chance, and that is just from your father. What about when you go back to your grandfathers? Well, then the number jumps to 1/27,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Adding in just a third generation of ancestors jumps the number to 1/(2.187 x 10^59) or 1/218,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
That infinitesimally small chance in itself should be staggering enough to convince anyone that they’re mere existence is a miracle, but I like to go for the REAL shockers. Our species (homo sapiens sapiens) has walked the earth for approximately 200,000 years. Estimating an average span of 20 years between generations, we can boil that down to 10,000 generations. Having tried to do the math, I can say that the denominators involved are so large, that the built in calculator on my computer freezes when trying to calculate it. Think about that. The chance of your birth is so small that a computer can’t figure it out. If that is not a miracle nothing is.
I have only looked at the numbers involved with the male component of genetics, but the numbers on the female side, while smaller, are still impressively massive. The average human female has approximately 7,000,000 oocytes (cells that can form into eggs) that are formed when she is in utero. At birth approximately 2,000,000 of them remain. Only approximately 400,000 of them remain by puberty, and only between 400 and 500 are released during ovulations, while the rest degenerate. So, of the 7,000,000 oocytes that formed in your mothers ovaries, only 1 created you. If any of the other 7,000,000 cells had matured and been released instead, you would be different. Needless to say, while the numbers are not as mindblowing as those of the male gender, they still add up. If I was to take the time to factor these numbers in with those of the male gender, the numbers would become incalculable even more rapidly.
As I approach the conclusion of this tirade, I have come to a realization. I didn't take time into account in any of these calculations. While this could be an interesting tangent to take, I am tired and the numbers I have already looked at have been enough to hurt my brain, so I will refrain from investigating it for now.
The chance of you being born as who you are, where you are, and when you were born is incalculably small. Yet here you are. You, a unique individual the like of which the world has never seen. An individual capable of bringing things to the world that it has never seen before and may never see again. You, a person capable of spreading love and joy or misery and hate throughout this world. Choose what you do, and do it with all your heart, for the universe had to have chosen to produce you, now, for a reason.
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