Stop Stressing and be Grateful

Do you have any idea what a fluke you are?

What do you suppose the odds are of you even existing?

One in a billion? Trillion?

Well, the odds of your parents meeting, dating and staying together long enough to conceive you are about 1 in 40 million, assuming your dad met about 10,000 women in 25 years.

If we look at the two things required to actually make a baby (eggs and sperm), that alone is about 1 in 400 quadrillion.

Complicating matters is the inescapable fact that for that to happen, every one of your ancestors had to live to reproductive age.

If we go back, as we must, to the first single-cell organism over 4 billion years ago, that adds further odds – 1 in 10 with 45,000 zeros after it.

And there’s more.

In order for the right sperm to meet the right egg in every one of your ancestors, we need to add more odds – 1 in 10 with 2,640,000 zeros after it.

To put that in perspective, the number of atoms in the entire known universe is 10 to the power of 80.

Phew!

So what does this all mean?

It means your chance of even participating in this incredible game called LIFE is a hair’s breath shy of zero!

While we run around, stressed about things like our mortgages, the kids’ school fees, our car repair bill or that strange lump that’s appeared where we’re embarrassed to say – we’re floating on a planet that’s circling a ball of fire; kept company by a moon that moves the tides, inside a galaxy that’s one of billions of other galaxies!

But why am I telling you this?

It’s to urge you to recognise how incredibly lucky you are.

Lucky, first, that you’re here.

And lucky that you live in a country where you’re free to make your life pretty much as you choose; where you alone can decide what your legacy will be. 

You have access to everything you need to make your time on this planet an astonishing adventure.

You have a right to earn money so you can feed your family and sleep comfortably at night.

Above all, you have a right to make some mistakes and wake up the next day to play the game again.

And it is just a game.

It’s an all-consuming, constantly-changing, once-in-an-eon game.

So appreciate it and stop stressing because, in 100 years, there will be all new players!