“And what would humans be without love?" ….
"RARE, said Death” ― Terry Pratchett
"The odds of you being you, taking into account parentage, ancestry, genetics, eggs,
sperm, etc., is equivalent to 2 million people, each rolling a trillion-sided die,
and having each person roll precisely the same number
(approximately 1 in 10^2,685,000) at exactly the same time..."
That’s a deeply daunting bit of math …..sperm, etc., is equivalent to 2 million people, each rolling a trillion-sided die,
and having each person roll precisely the same number
(approximately 1 in 10^2,685,000) at exactly the same time..."
One of the reasons that female babies are more potentially likely than males is that, while male sperm swim faster and more vigorously than their female counterparts, outpacing them almost immediately right out of the gate in their mad rush to get to The Precious, they also tire pretty fast. It’s the tortoise and the hare all over again.
“We are all going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people
who could have been here in my place, but who will in fact never see the light of day, outnumber the
grains of sand in all the deserts of Arabia.
Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.
Artists greater than Da Vinci. Thinkers greater than Einstein. We know this because
the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.
In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds…. “
UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW; Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder …
Richard Dawkins
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people
who could have been here in my place, but who will in fact never see the light of day, outnumber the
grains of sand in all the deserts of Arabia.
Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.
Artists greater than Da Vinci. Thinkers greater than Einstein. We know this because
the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.
In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds…. “
UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW; Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder …
Richard Dawkins
may be by circumstance, however debilitated by our shared burden of illness, we each have something unique to offer, something that only we can give, something that we didn’t imitate, borrow, or copy from someone else, but that’s singularly ours, something incredibly special to contribute to the greater good, to ourselves, and to each other …..
We may not know what it is yet, but we absolutely need to believe that it’s in there, snoozing quietly, waiting patiently for us to discover it and rouse it into action ….
A dove struggling in a storm grows stronger than an eagle
soaring in sunshine — Matshona Dhliwayo