For You, Whoever You Are

It started, they say, with a bang. Energy and matter were flung across the expansive void, filling it steadily with light and gas. Some of this would condense into shapes, and some of those would form planets, and only a select few of those had the right kind of stuff to create life.

Somehow, on those special few, life thrived. Division and multiplication occurred in just the right way. Eventually, this led to creatures coexisting with vegetation that provided both nutrients and shelter, and the creatures and vegetation would evolve over time.

Let’s fast forward through this ever-changing landscape. Through this continuing symbiotic relationship between nourishing, multiplying and dividing, some homo sapiens engaged in the act of procreation. This is where you and I started. I guess, you could say, it started with a bang.

And here we are, you and I, with everything we have ever needed. There is water here, one of the first substances to develop on our planet, and we need that water to live. There is vegetation here, which evolved with our most distant ancestors to provide a variety of nutrients that we need to thrive. We rotate around a large, gaseous thing at just the right distance to provide us with the heat required to even exist. I haven’t studied science too closely, and I really have been talking out my ass this whole time, but from what I do understand, that heat, the distance, and stuff our planet is made of, has created an atmosphere that protects us. We breathe, drink, consume and bask in the same chemicals that created all this crazy action in the first place.

And that’s nuts. All these factors had to be just right in order for your parents to exist, have sex and bring you into this life. And what are you, anyway? Your carbon-based body is such small beans compared to the breadth and wonder of your consciousness. Your perspective, your reasoning, your dreams – all of that contained in just one vessel among billions of vessels, on just one planet that just happened to be at the right distance from our sun, in just one galaxy in an entire universe of possibilities.

Does that scare you? Or make you feel small? Why? It really shouldn’t. The mere chance at you existing and reading this now, where ever you are, defies description. It is so spontaneous; it is magnificent and endlessly marvelous.

I mean, really! We’ve just gone over the most simplified basics of the science behind how we are here, together. What about the psychology? The whole series of experiences, from the first firing of some neurons through your synapses that allowed you to think, that lead you to this moment right here. What formative experience could have prevented you from reading this? Or from having ever heard of Vocal? Or from having any desire to read at all?

Formative experiences, by the way, are not just the most splendid of your memories or the dismal traumas that defined the most robust aspects of you as a person. I’m talking about the moments you probably have forgotten by now. Even the smallest, forgetful experiences that stack up overtime and build your biases, your habits, your dialect, your mannerisms, etc. could be considered formative.

You may think you only have a handful of truly formative moments in your life. Consider this: if you counted every single instance that ever guided you, changed you, taught you, hurt you and inspired you, and every single instance was its own card, how big would your deck of cards be? Enormous. It is possible that there would be as many cards in your deck as there are stars in the sky!

That same sky, don’t forget, is only there by chance to begin with. And then here is your deck of cards – experiences – that are so personal to you, and you only. They have stacked in just such a way that we are here, together and yet apart. Here I am, typing furiously to the musical talent of Erik Satie (just think if his deck of experiences!), and you, separated from me only by the dimensions of space and time.

Astounding. How insanely gorgeous are we? All these chances and if just one thing had gone differently, one thing in a countless amount of things, we would not be sharing this experience together. So many things that could have gone differently…

Which leaves an awful number of things to be grateful for, doesn’t it? We could count all of them, starting with that first bang, but that would take quite a lot of time. Let’s simplify it, shall we?

Personally, I am grateful for you. Chances are that I don’t know you and will never meet you, but I am grateful for you all the same. Every person involved in your making, every vegetation or creature you consumed to live, and every experience that has led you here; I am grateful for it all. I am grateful that you read this far and are sharing this with me.

I am also grateful for every person involved in my making, every chemical and nutrient I consumed to thrive and every experience, painful or lovely, that has led me here. Every moment that inspired me to be here, writing this musing on what a miracle it is that you or I could exist at all.

I know that our world is complicated and that life is full of as much darkness as there is light. You may not be having a very good go of things, but please know that I am grateful for you. I see you, even without seeing you, and you are beautiful no matter what.

Because from such a crazy amount of chances, you are here. We are here. And it is really such a wonderful world that we can share together.

With endless admiration from afar,

Happy Holidays.