Do You Feel Lucky?
by Bert Oliva
Do you know how lucky you are? Do you even have a clue?
So much of the time we walk around in a stupor of bills, work projects, family obligations, and all the other things that make up the everyday doings of our day-to-day lives, that we miss the magic that we are living. We get so busy with “living” that we forget to live. We let our lives “live us” instead of living life.
We take our existence for granted. Many of us don’t even think about it. The different circumstances that had to come together for you to come into existence are staggering:
o Odds of your parents meeting: 1 in 20,000.
o Odds of your parents forming a relationship that led to pregnancy: 1 in 2,000.
o Odds of the right sperm meeting the right egg: 1 in 400 quadrillion (that’s one thousand million million).
o Odds of every single ancestor of yours meeting and reproducing successfully: 1 in 1045,000 (for a comparison, the number of atoms in the known universe is currently estimated at just 1080).
o Odds of every single ancestor producing the exact people they did: 102,640,000 (when you put this into Google’s calculator, it literally says “infinity”).1
Everything came together just right for you to be here. Every one of us is a walking miracle.
So let’s stop feeling sorry for ourselves and thinking we’re so unlucky shall we? Let’s stop worrying about the petty things in life and just realize this one immutable fact: we are all incredibly lucky to be here. To be breathing. To have the chance to affect the world with our presence.
We have each been given an opportunity to make our mark on this world. We can choose whether to take it and whether to leave a positive or negative mark, but we have the choice because an infinite number of things came together just right for us to be here.
Don’t waste your opportunity. Take the time to appreciate it. Realize the magic that you are carrying within yourself. The beauty you have to share with the world. Your time is limited here. Make the most of it.
There are times when this is easier said than done, I know. I’m human too, with children and responsibilities. And there are definitely days when I don’t feel as lucky to be here. But when I find that feeling creeping in, I take a moment. I stop and breathe. I start to think about every little event that happened to bring me into existence.
I’m a walking miracle. And so are you.
Live Life, Don’t Let Life Live You.
Bert Oliva
1Binazir, Ali. What are the chances of your coming into being? http://bit.ly/TZNkKB.
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