Did you know that right at about this point as you are reading this, everything is going just right for you? Think about it. Leading up to this moment everything about you, around you, including your general state of mind, must be just about hunky dory. Right? Otherwise, if you're hassled, stressed, or there are other things going on in your life that is not right, you will have no time for this mundane, if not entirely insignificant missive. In other words, you have a moment to spare right now, your mind is free from anything urgent because if you'd rather be doing something else then you ought to be doing that right now. This can wait, obviously.
Actually, yes, this moment in your life is significant for countless reasons. First, you made it all the way right up to about now - alive - and this occurrence is for but once, and the rest of all the moments to come are each equally unique and will certainly never be repeated in the future - not even once. Second, a trillion, trillion things, countless uninterrupted moments had to line up just right to get you here. I mentioned in one of my earlier musings that it must take an unbroken chain of cell divisions and countless inherited and discarded traits over millennia after millennia for you to be alive today, because if a break had occurred at any time centuries prior, this past year, or just several moments ago, you will not be here, let alone be reading this. Keep in mind that Ancestry.com and every genealogy website capitalize on this very fact: the continuous and unbroken links of lives, countless lifetimes lived and remembered because, otherwise, what business is there to be had? Every living person, one of approximately 7 billion people on earth alive today, is at the tip of unbroken ancestry chains. Bear with me because there is a point to all of these.
To paraphrase the entire introduction to Bill Bryson's book, "A Brief History of Nearly Everything", trillions upon trillions of atoms, an infinitely large number for us to contemplate, make up the human body. It took that unthinkable number to make you you. But the atoms in your body don't know that you are there; in fact, they don't even know that they (the atoms themselves) are there.
Taken individually, any single atom in your body - from your bone marrow to the blood cells made there, to the keratin on your finger nails, to everything that makes up your pancreas and the tissue of your brain - is an inanimate object, unrecognizable and indistinct from all other atoms everywhere. But put together, they've become the whole you. Setting humility aside, for a moment, nondescript atoms notwithstanding, you may rejoice that there is only one you.
But first, a reality check. 99.9999999 .... % of the approximately 7 billion people alive today don't know you, and neither you them. But then, unlike the atoms that make up your whole physical body, you are aware that all of the other people are out there, and many of them think the same way. Why we are aware, why we have this consciousness is a mystery because the parts that make us a single thinking entity do not themselves think.
Taken individually, any single atom in your body - from your bone marrow to the blood cells made there, to the keratin on your finger nails, to everything that makes up your pancreas and the tissue of your brain - is an inanimate object, unrecognizable and indistinct from all other atoms everywhere. But put together, they've become the whole you. Setting humility aside, for a moment, nondescript atoms notwithstanding, you may rejoice that there is only one you.
But first, a reality check. 99.9999999 .... % of the approximately 7 billion people alive today don't know you, and neither you them. But then, unlike the atoms that make up your whole physical body, you are aware that all of the other people are out there, and many of them think the same way. Why we are aware, why we have this consciousness is a mystery because the parts that make us a single thinking entity do not themselves think.
Let's continue to set aside humility once more. It took a lot of resources from the universe to make you you and just you. Not only that but the process had to be done right and just so. We're still talking about you. Set aside everything else where and when things did not come out right. Because if those happened to you or it occurred in a way that some genes got messed up, or there was a DNA irregularity, or for any number of abnormal events then you may not have the ability to read this. So, set that thought aside and focus on you - the one for whom everything seemed to have gone right.
There is much to feel good about you and you have every reason to be grateful. And if you can't come up with anything at all, right now, the next few minutes might help. On the other hand, if you're comfortable with everything going on with your life, there is much more to rejoice about which you may have overlooked.
Here is how the universe made you. I am being inclusive here for those who do not believe in The Creator. First, the elements that make up your entire body originally came from far, far away, and from billions of years ago. In fact, there is nothing "local" about where you came from, if "local" is the entire solar system, which did not even exist long before the building blocks that will make you were already in existence. A long, long time ago from somewhere so unimaginably far, far away, a huge star depleted all of its hydrogen, as giants like it lived short lives that may have only lasted perhaps for only a few million years. By the way, a million years from the context of the age of the universe is a mere moment. As soon as it ran out of hydrogen, creating carbon and then all of it into iron, the star, in an instant, exploded into a supernova. Such an explosion was necessary to create the rest of the heavier elements by compressing with such tremendous pressure and heat the surrounding gases and dust near the star at the time. The iron in your body may have come from the original star but all the calcium, potassium, all the other heavier elements came from that supernova explosion. You are made of star dust. So is the gold and silver in your ring and in your smart phone, the titanium in hip replacement parts, the potassium in watermelons, etc.
You are literally made of recycled material. Yet, you are unique because the possible combinations of the parts that made you and from where each had come from, the specific moments of how you were conceived might have been totally random but a lot had to have been just right to make it possible. This brings us to what scientists call the Goldilocks principle or effect.
"The Goldilocks zone refers to the habitable zone around a star: As Stephen Hawking put it, “like Goldilocks, the development of intelligent life requires that planetary temperatures be ‘just right’”. The Goldilocks principle is, of course, based on the children's story where the little girl named Goldilocks preferred the bowl of porridge that was just right. Not too hot, not too cold.
That is how it started for you and all living things around you. As far as you know, life, as of now, is only known to exist on this planet. That is because everything happened to be just right. Venus that is too close to the sun is so hot water will boil off in an instant; Mars, a bit farther away, is much too cold for liquid water to exist, except as ice year round. Your earth is where water remains in liquid state under ordinary circumstances that it occupies almost 3/4 of the entire globe. Air and water and just the right amount of warmth are the major precursors to life as you know it. Your habitat happens to be just right.
Wherever you are, whatever the status you occupy in all of humanity's hierarchical scheme of things, if you are reading this, you had already benefited from a lengthy period in life where most of everything happened to have been just right. And, yes, there had to have been plenty of moments too where and when certain things did not go right. But lest you forget, here you are reading about it so you must have gotten over those moments when things didn't go right. To have lived this far in time, think that just a century ago, even the most prolific dreamer of that time had no idea that this was to be the future. He or she never could have realized that their most ambitious list of wishes would pale in comparison to what today you are taking for granted. Just the very thought that you can tap your ideas into a pad and it is instantaneously transmitted over twelve thousand miles into another pad somewhere had to have been the literal equivalent of someone's wildest dream in 1919.
So, not only that everything so far had been just right for you, you have the capability to understand why it is. You see, as much ability that bats and dolphins can navigate by sonar, that the cheetah can out accelerate a Ferrari in 2.5 seconds of time from stand still, or a colony of bacteria can multiply exponentially in all kinds of environment, all of these creatures have no clue why they are able to do so. In just a few keystrokes right now, if you are inclined to do it, you will have more information on the subjects than Madam Curie or Isaac Newton could have had.
You just happen to have it just right. Now, we've set humility aside for some moments now so let our hubris take a rest. Think for a moment that if you believe you are one-in-a-million of some kind, a special person in your own eyes, if you are a citizen in China or India, there are a thousand others like you thinking the same way you do. From the context of the world's total population there could be 7,000 others who could think the same way. 7,000 one-in-a-million type of person is no longer so special, is it? Why this must be said is that to live just right means balancing between the tug of war between humility and hubris.
The universe may have made you just right but here is something to think about. The Creator made it so, and if you must know, that your place is right in the middle from the hierarchy of size in the solar system, from the tiniest hydrogen atom to the largest structure, which is the sun. From an obscure science article written in Australia, I had read something rather interesting about your place in the overall scheme of things. The average human body, just about 5 feet tall, is right about in the middle. In other words, Danny Devito would be almost in between a single hydrogen atom and the sun. The link to an article below explains it more succinctly.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/03/30/2859247.htm
You are literally made of recycled material. Yet, you are unique because the possible combinations of the parts that made you and from where each had come from, the specific moments of how you were conceived might have been totally random but a lot had to have been just right to make it possible. This brings us to what scientists call the Goldilocks principle or effect.
"The Goldilocks zone refers to the habitable zone around a star: As Stephen Hawking put it, “like Goldilocks, the development of intelligent life requires that planetary temperatures be ‘just right’”. The Goldilocks principle is, of course, based on the children's story where the little girl named Goldilocks preferred the bowl of porridge that was just right. Not too hot, not too cold.
That is how it started for you and all living things around you. As far as you know, life, as of now, is only known to exist on this planet. That is because everything happened to be just right. Venus that is too close to the sun is so hot water will boil off in an instant; Mars, a bit farther away, is much too cold for liquid water to exist, except as ice year round. Your earth is where water remains in liquid state under ordinary circumstances that it occupies almost 3/4 of the entire globe. Air and water and just the right amount of warmth are the major precursors to life as you know it. Your habitat happens to be just right.
Wherever you are, whatever the status you occupy in all of humanity's hierarchical scheme of things, if you are reading this, you had already benefited from a lengthy period in life where most of everything happened to have been just right. And, yes, there had to have been plenty of moments too where and when certain things did not go right. But lest you forget, here you are reading about it so you must have gotten over those moments when things didn't go right. To have lived this far in time, think that just a century ago, even the most prolific dreamer of that time had no idea that this was to be the future. He or she never could have realized that their most ambitious list of wishes would pale in comparison to what today you are taking for granted. Just the very thought that you can tap your ideas into a pad and it is instantaneously transmitted over twelve thousand miles into another pad somewhere had to have been the literal equivalent of someone's wildest dream in 1919.
So, not only that everything so far had been just right for you, you have the capability to understand why it is. You see, as much ability that bats and dolphins can navigate by sonar, that the cheetah can out accelerate a Ferrari in 2.5 seconds of time from stand still, or a colony of bacteria can multiply exponentially in all kinds of environment, all of these creatures have no clue why they are able to do so. In just a few keystrokes right now, if you are inclined to do it, you will have more information on the subjects than Madam Curie or Isaac Newton could have had.
You just happen to have it just right. Now, we've set humility aside for some moments now so let our hubris take a rest. Think for a moment that if you believe you are one-in-a-million of some kind, a special person in your own eyes, if you are a citizen in China or India, there are a thousand others like you thinking the same way you do. From the context of the world's total population there could be 7,000 others who could think the same way. 7,000 one-in-a-million type of person is no longer so special, is it? Why this must be said is that to live just right means balancing between the tug of war between humility and hubris.
The universe may have made you just right but here is something to think about. The Creator made it so, and if you must know, that your place is right in the middle from the hierarchy of size in the solar system, from the tiniest hydrogen atom to the largest structure, which is the sun. From an obscure science article written in Australia, I had read something rather interesting about your place in the overall scheme of things. The average human body, just about 5 feet tall, is right about in the middle. In other words, Danny Devito would be almost in between a single hydrogen atom and the sun. The link to an article below explains it more succinctly.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/03/30/2859247.htm
So, there you are, for whom most everything is just right, isn't it?
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