You Are A Miracle
Imagine an explosion so big that it sends debris and detritus flying in all directions, and with such force that nearly 14 billion years later all that ‘stuff’ is still flying around willy-nilly, across distances so vast we cannot see them even with our most powerful telescopes.
Imagine that as a result of this massive explosion, matter started to clump together. Some of it caught fire and became stars – trillions of burning furnaces spinning about space, ejecting atoms and energy into the darkness, bringing light where before there had been nothing.
Some of that matter clumped together to become planets. Huge lumps of rock and gas, greater in number than the atoms in your body, than the stars in the universe, bumping around, spinning in circles, crashing about in such huge numbers that there aren’t enough zeroes to describe them.
At some point, one of these lumps of matter got just close enough to one of these burning furnaces – not too close, not too far, just right – that they became entangled in a sort of gravitational dance. This dance, replicated by billions upon billions of planets across the cosmos, was somehow different from any other. Because the circumstances were just right – the size of the lump of rock orbiting the burning star, its gravitational pull, the radiation, the pull of the other planets spinning nearby, the warmth and light and moisture – to twist the rock’s atoms and chemicals and molecules into strands of DNA.
Lightning, and nitrogen and fire and water and all the right probabilities and improbabilities, and suddenly there were the first rudimentary cells. And when those perished, more lightning gave birth to more rudimentary cells, and they perished too. And eventually, a rudimentary cell didn’t perish, but split apart and replicated.
Over billions of years, these cells warped and shifted, ate each other, merged together and multiplied. Sometimes the process failed, and it all had to begin again. But powered by chance and the right conditions, single-celled organisms appeared. And their numbers grew. And they mutated. Strange creatures began to swim in the primordial seas of this lump of rock. They became bigger and more complex and more diverse. Random chance, followed by random chance, combined with the right conditions, some lightning, and just a little bit of luck, led to some traits and characteristics surviving, and others being forgotten forever.
Dinosaurs, the Dodo, the Coelacanth, Neanderthals, Homo erectus, step by step, little by little, millions, billions of attempts and opportunities and failures and successes. Millions and billions of mutations happening in the right place at the right time.
And then one day, two cells filled with DNA met. Previous efforts had come to nothing on many, many occasions. But today the timing was critical, and the circumstances were just right. Fusing together, they formed a zygote. And as it cleaved and divided, split apart and took shape, it began to transform into you.
The chance that you exist is more improbable than winning the lottery a thousand times in a row. But there you are. It’s taken 14 billion years of luck. A cosmos full of happenstance and unbelievable chance. But there you are.
The universe conspired to make you happen. All of this just to makes sure you happened.
There you are, a miracle of improbability. A miracle of luck. A miracle of impossibility. A miracle. There you are. Sat at your desk. Keeping your head down. Eating your microwave dinner. Trying not to be noticed. Denying the absolute miracle of you.
There you are. Proof that magic is real. That anything is possible, no matter what the odds. There you are, a marvel of randomness, of 14 billion years of trying and failing and trying and failing and finally succeeding.
There you are.
Why are you not dancing and shouting from the highest mountain? Why are you not celebrating every day? Why are you not sharing this fantastic miracle with all the other fantastic miracles? Why are you not trying to be as weird and wonderful and marvellous and miraculous as you possibly can be?
Do you know what the chances are of you existing at all? They are – as we have already discussed – slim.
There you are. 14 billion years in the making. Yes, you’re worthy. Yes, you are extraordinary. Yes, you deserve more than to disappear into the crowd. And no, you weren’t just born to make up the numbers.
There you are.