8 Billion People, 2 Billion Seconds

TIL there are about 8 billion humans on Earth, each granted, on average, around 2 billion to 3 billion seconds of embodiment. That’s a range of 63 to 95 years.

I’m crossing that 2 billion threshold, this year.

That means, if I had met one new person every second of my life, I would only ever meet about 1/4 to 3/8 of the human beings currently on the planet over the course of my life.

So, the odds of meeting the love of my life, when we met and the way that we met, and the number of seconds and years that I have experienced the privilege and responsibility, the difficulties and triumphs, of sharing these experiences with such an extraordinary being, are pretty extraordinary to say the least.

We can perhaps interpret this mathematics to mean that none of us are of any measurable significance whatsoever, we are all relatively worthless, anonymous, interchangeable, indistinguishable specs of dust, so, we might as well just all melt into mud and be done with illusory feelings of human dignity or worth.

Or, we can interpret the unique value of one cherishing the unique value of one, for the duration of those brief couple of billion seconds, as one of the rarest gems in all existence.

Some things are more difficult to see as both and than others.