Life

Alone in the Universe

What if we ARE alone in the universe? What if in 14 billion years across 200 trillion stars, there has never been life that could replicate itself? This thought is deeply poignant to me. If we are the only life that can exist, has existed, can ever exist in the universe, the existence of life – any life, yours, mine, Fatberry’s, ants, Donald Trump, algae, redwoods, moray eels – is a miracle of staggering proportions. What is our responsibility to protect life if we have the extraordinary privilege of being the only living things in the vast inky universe?

That we are living beings is an astronomical privilege – literally, in all the cosmos, there is nothing out there like life as far as we know. To be a multi-cellular organism – what a bizarre and unlikely arrangement. To be a mammal, that can love – what an extraordinary miracle. To have a human brain, that can figure out problems, that can create and comprehend calculus, that can make instruments that measure the expansion of the universe, that makes machines that can hold all the information that ever was, that can recombine RNA to stop deadly diseases – even the humblest of us is truly a wonder beyond comprehension. 

To spend even a moment moping about why we didn’t get that sale, why your spouse is mad at you, why your favorite TV show got cancelled, why we’re letting Mexicans cross the border – is to have completely lost the plot. We are here. We are marvelous. Every one of us, every day, united in this unlikely unfolding of the bewildering miracle that is life. And what a shame we aren’t using our crazy human brains to solve the problem of how to arrive at a quality of life that allows us to protect what’s left of our species and forests, to create an economy that factors in everything living and every one person instead of only profits to shareholders. 

Here we arrive at two contradictory truths that are both accurate: Life is the most abundant thing on the planet, and the scarcest thing in the universe. It’s everywhere, and almost nowhere.

Being native to life, it’s pretty rare that we see it – that we appreciate the ridiculous fecundity of being surrounded by trees and grass and bugs and other people, all starting from organic molecules that somehow started reproducing. I never used to pay attention to this. As I’ve confessed, I nearly threw my life away, and spent decades wasting my time on this earth chasing after chemicals and food – there wasn’t a thought in my head that life was a gift, and that I had a front-row seat to the strangest and most unlikely show in the known universe. 

To my fellow sufferers, I suggest this: Try putting yourself in context. Not the context of how you compare to other people, but how your existence compares to the void of space, or how your human brain compares to humble proteins 4 billion years ago. Even on a bad day, even when you don’t feel like you’re living up to your potential, you’re a success beyond measure just by being a living being on Planet Earth – bonus points for having human consciousness to learn and understand about the very cosmos we’re hurtling through. Living beings may be alone in the universe, but we are here together. Welcome to the party.

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