You Are a Living Breathing Miracle

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”― Albert Einstein

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After reading a writer’s troubled poem about isolation today, I contemplated how there are many of us who struggle in life because we lack the right support and love around us. And how this loneliness creates a perspective within, so narrow, that it clouds the magic of our humanness.

As children, if we aren’t loved unconditionally, we grow up doubting our worthiness. When we live in dysfunctional environments, are bullied at school or in childhood and adult relationships, we question if we matter.

Many times, in life, we can find ourselves alone — cut off — asking ourselves who could ever possibly 'love someone like me'. We feel unlovable and not enough for the world.

For some of us, these are fleeting thoughts, and for others, these notions are all too consuming and rob us of any little joy and happiness.

How can we concede that we unconditionally ‘matter’ when we feel separated from others, with no one particular person we can trust to mirror our worthiness?

Some of us may hold on to faith and believe in something bigger that loves us — the Universe or God. I’m able to say wholeheartedly that I’ve found in a sense, having faith supports me, and even helps me to try and make sense of the questions I have about my existence and the meaning and purpose of my life.

Yet for many of us who have been hurt and let down in life can turn inward, our hearts harden, and we find it difficult or even perhaps impossible to believe in anything beyond this existence outside of our planet.

I’ve been there too.

But the problem with sinking too far inward into the Self is that we lose a sense of our common humanity and lose the concept of our unique humanness.

Having a sense of curving outwards yields a ‘belongingness’ that’s fuelled by being part of a physical and emotional network system. Without these foundational rocks, we can lose a sense of self-acceptance.

And as well as this ‘belongingness’ and ‘mattering’ remember that the chances of your existence are a rare probability.

When our lives are entangled in distress, we wonder what the point of being here is. We feel we are a mistake — we have to be, don’t we — to be this much of a misfit!

Yet did you know that it is more likely to win the lottery ten times in our lifetimes than to have the chance of life? That is how rare it is to be who we are.

You and I came into existence by the odds of 1 in 400 trillion. Mel Robbins spoke about this in one of her talks here. She wanted to highlight this extraordinary fact to help encourage and teach her audience to grasp the sheer significance of the immense value we all own in the miracle of being our very selves.

1 in 400 trillion may sound like a bunch of inconceivable statistics to you because when numbers of these colossal amounts are thrown up, our brains shut down. The odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 300 million, and so imagine that ten times in your lifetime. Impossible, you say!

A thousand times a thousand makes up one million, and a trillion is a million times a million. A million times a million, and then times that by 400 is phenomenal.

It is like throwing a rubber ring into the middle of the ocean, and the only turtle alive sticks its head through it on the first try. Considering the size of the ocean, its surface area is about 139 million square miles. That’s a pretty rare chance!

The probability of YOU being born is so low if we start to ponder over how all of our ancestors had to line up and survive around all the wars, famine, and diseases, and then when we arrive before your existence, the exact sperm and egg from your parents with the DNA sequence that created and encoded you to bring you into this world — had to all happen!

Ian R. Campbell, via LinkedIn, helps us understand what one trillion represents. Taken from his bullet points, he wrote:

You could travel a trillion miles, taking a return trip to our moon over 2 million times.

To travel a trillion miles, you would have to circumnavigate Earth about 40 million times. (Earth’s circumference is approximately 24.901 miles).

Pay $10 for a meal at a fast-food restaurant, then buy 100,000 million more identical meals.

And to envision an even clearer idea of putting into context the statistics of 1 in 400 trillion, I have added the data, as follows:

You have:

· 1 in 1,222,000 chance of death or injury from lightning in a given year.

· 1 in 57,825 chance of dying from a hornet, wasp, or bee sting during your lifetime.

· 1 in a 35,074-lifetime chance of dying in a cataclysmic storm.

We can start to see here that we are all a walking-talking incredible feat — and for whatever reason — we were meant to be here on planet Earth.

We have been gifted a chance to show up, and even though it can be hard to acknowledge how special we are deep down, here in lies the facts.

Another factor that contributes to our isolation is that we are so far removed from our gifts and talents.

We feel if we aren’t making millions out of them or a lifestyle, they cannot be that worthy. When in fact, they are part of who we are in our rareness, and for us to revel in the joy of using them, no matter if they create an income or not. They give us joy.

Brené Brown wrote in ‘The Gifts Of Imperfections’, “Squandering our gifts brings distress to our lives. As it turns out, it’s not merely benign, or ‘too bad’ if we don’t use the gifts we have been given; we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don’t use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and weighed down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame, disappointment, fear, and even grief.”

I believe when we start to feel connected to ourselves — our gifts and talents — honouring our low and rare probability of being here, we can start to walk with our head held high and from a prouder stance.

Thank you for being you

© Chantal Weiss 2025. All Rights Reserved