Titans & Gods
My coal-miner uncle once wrote me:
Dear Marrs,
(small talk deleted)
Theres lots of time to think down here in the hole and after 23 years I finaly come to the conclution that existanse per say as far as I can figure its sorta like this. (sic)
(punctuation added) If you happen to have gotten lucky enough to have had all of your particles blown in the right direction during the most recent Big Bang; and those particles happen to have gotten sucked into the galactic orbit in which earth now spins; and those particles happen to have been lucky enough to have been of the just the right atomic weight, density, and distance from the center of our as-yet-unformed solar system; and those particles were fortunate enough to be sucked into the mass which congealed to form of this thing commonly referred to as Earth; and those particles managed to end up in their recycling phase at just the right time and place to be used as the organic material—the stuff we so unimaginably narrowly describe as 'living'—recruited by some DNA molecule to become one of gazillions of sperm; of which only a few trillion will ever have even the remotest of chances of at developing; of which only a relatively few billion will ever have a chance to actually fertilize an egg; of which only roughly 10-25 percent will actually develop into humans; of which only about 25% will survive long enough to actually emerge from the initial stages (9 mos) of life to become viable human beings; of which roughly 25% will mature to fully developed human beings.
In short, Marrs my boy, if you can still read this you've already overcome every obstacle the universe has ever thrown at you. (Your present troubles ain't even a stubbed toe in comparison!) And if infinite journeys full of impossibly difficult tasks with an individual success rate which is probably a number with a decimal point on the left, a ‘one’ on the right and a whole truckload of zero's in between. And if these incredible journeys make heroes, then we’re all Titans and Gods and survivors of the most fantastic and wonderful kind.
It brings new meaning to being alive if you can just take one big giant step back and look at the whole picture (or at least as much as our teensy little brains can focus on). You realize then that even the weakest and lowliest of us have traveled millions and millions of billions of miles. Hell, Marrs, you and I, we’ve passed through and overcome everything from black holes to your aunt Karylyns lutefisk!
And survived em all!
Live good,
(Your Favorite Earthworm),
Uncle Ruud
(Illumination often comes in the darkest of places! Thanks again, Earthworm.)
Dear Marrs,
(small talk deleted)
Theres lots of time to think down here in the hole and after 23 years I finaly come to the conclution that existanse per say as far as I can figure its sorta like this. (sic)
(punctuation added) If you happen to have gotten lucky enough to have had all of your particles blown in the right direction during the most recent Big Bang; and those particles happen to have gotten sucked into the galactic orbit in which earth now spins; and those particles happen to have been lucky enough to have been of the just the right atomic weight, density, and distance from the center of our as-yet-unformed solar system; and those particles were fortunate enough to be sucked into the mass which congealed to form of this thing commonly referred to as Earth; and those particles managed to end up in their recycling phase at just the right time and place to be used as the organic material—the stuff we so unimaginably narrowly describe as 'living'—recruited by some DNA molecule to become one of gazillions of sperm; of which only a few trillion will ever have even the remotest of chances of at developing; of which only a relatively few billion will ever have a chance to actually fertilize an egg; of which only roughly 10-25 percent will actually develop into humans; of which only about 25% will survive long enough to actually emerge from the initial stages (9 mos) of life to become viable human beings; of which roughly 25% will mature to fully developed human beings.
In short, Marrs my boy, if you can still read this you've already overcome every obstacle the universe has ever thrown at you. (Your present troubles ain't even a stubbed toe in comparison!) And if infinite journeys full of impossibly difficult tasks with an individual success rate which is probably a number with a decimal point on the left, a ‘one’ on the right and a whole truckload of zero's in between. And if these incredible journeys make heroes, then we’re all Titans and Gods and survivors of the most fantastic and wonderful kind.
It brings new meaning to being alive if you can just take one big giant step back and look at the whole picture (or at least as much as our teensy little brains can focus on). You realize then that even the weakest and lowliest of us have traveled millions and millions of billions of miles. Hell, Marrs, you and I, we’ve passed through and overcome everything from black holes to your aunt Karylyns lutefisk!
And survived em all!
Live good,
(Your Favorite Earthworm),
Uncle Ruud
(Illumination often comes in the darkest of places! Thanks again, Earthworm.)
posted by Jefferson | 5:56 AM
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