"Overall, you're pretty lucky to be here. Today, remember that and show some cosmic humility."
Nobody ever really thinks about it, but that odds are astonishingly against their being born.
Odds of a Single Earth Occurring: 1 in 10^139
Odds of Human Life Forming: 1 in 4^300
Odds of Parents Meeting and having a child that is You: 1 in 10^2,685,000
All in all, this is what that probability looks like
I know my math is slightly off, but it's close enough for demonstrative purposes. The odds that a single person would come into existence are literally infinitely large. All of that kind of goes out the window though when you look at the fact that everyone is already here.
But besides that, people are always caught up in stupid little things and they never think about how little our lives mean in the grand scale of things. Using Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar, you can plot the entire age of the universe as a year to put things in perspective.
The Big Bang: January 1st
Formation of Milky Way Galaxy: May 1st
Origin of Earth: September 14th
Life on Earth: September 25
December 31st
First Ancestor of Apes and Humans: 1:30pm
First Humans: 10:30pm
Civilization: 11:59:35pm
Invention of Written Language: 11:59:51pm
Fall of Rome: 11:59:57pm
European Renaissance: 11:59:59pm
Modern Day: January 1st, 12:00:01am
Average Human Lifespan: .16seconds
That's a pretty goddamn small amount amount of time. On the grand scale, we almost couldn't mean less.
And even after all this, we're even further insignificant. Think of it this way:
You are 1 Person out of 7 Billion
on 1 Planet out of 9
Orbiting 1 Star out of 500 Billion
in 1 Galaxy out of 80 Billion
With all that being said, with all the insignificance and improbabilities, life is still pretty amazing. Enjoy what little time you have here, and don't make it harder for anyone else.
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