You are a miracle
Seriously. Have you thought about it?
I recently finished reading The Watchmen and I can say that Alan Moore truly did a good job in discussing morality and humanity. I’d wholeheartedly recommend it. There is one character in the book called Dr. Manhattan, and at some point, he says this:
“And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg.
Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter… Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle.”
I mean, I have realized this before, but I still felt it. The power of words, man. It shook me.
Is it really possible for our brains to completely think that through, though? The thought of our extremely improbable existence, plus our insignificance[1] in all this, the idea that any of our actions might not matter at all, must be very hard-hitting. But I think we have to accept it. It’s kind of same as death in that regard — It’s terrifying, but the sooner you get used to it, the better.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
— Carl Sagan[1]
But what do we do? We complain. We constantly do. Don’t even refuse to acknowledge this — We think(at least subconsciously) that we are very important. We are egotistical and nearly every action that we do is meant to improve our well-being in one way or the other. Even if you have helped someone without anything in return, be honest, was it based on only empathy or did you do it for you to make yourself feel good?
I did it for me. I liked it..
— Walter White
I don’t want you to get me wrong. I’m a nihilist(maybe; even though I dislike labels in general), but as much as you have to accept your laughable insignificance, it’s celebratory at the same time. To quote Dr. Manhattan once again, anybody in the world is a miracle.
“But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget.”
You have to celebrate your(and others’) life at every moment. No matter how bad a mark you get in school, no matter what things you can’t buy, no matter how many crushes reject you — You still have to try to be happy and appreciate your existence. We have to understand that these things are extremely trivial. But I don’t mean that one shouldn’t strive to them; I know that we are very advanced animals with desires. It’s just that we live for some years and then die, So we don’t really have time to waste on being unhappy, do we?
This is not a motivational speech. This is the truth. Nothing comes after we are dead — so enjoy while there is something at least.
Come, dry your eyes. And let’s go home.
