The luckiest people in the world

If you're reading this, you probably exist. If you're human, that means you were probably born.

I want to take a moment and recognize the chances of your birth. What are the odds that a single living cell originated from the early Earth's primordial soup? What are the odds that single cell would form a symbiotic relationship with an absolute powerhouse of a cell (the mitochondrion!) and then group together with other cells to form a multicellular organism? What are the odds that small multicellular organisms would grow into the thoughtful beings we are today. And what are the odds that, once all that happened, you would be born?

You, as an individual, are beautiful, smart, and unique. You also have a distinct perspective and set of experiences that you can share with the world. There's nobody else like you. Based on my preliminary calculations, the odds of someone else being exactly like you are 1 in 7.8 billion, at best. Probably orders of magnitude closer to zero than that. Yet here you are.

I feel like our birthdays might be the luckiest moments of our lives. On top of that, we get to live now. That means we also have the unique opportunity to change the future. This is actually the only point in time that can do that. Not only are we incredibly lucky for existing, but we're incredibly lucky for the opportunity in front of us.

We've already built a lot of incredible things during our time here. There's still a long way to go. Let's do it together.

This post is part of the Daily Blogging Challenge. The theme for this article was "Chance." Thanks to Chris Hannah for sharing the challenge and Jeff Perry for organizing it!