The odds were against you
Field-note #2
"You were bred from storms; that is why you are primarily water. You were created from white-hot heat and from atoms that will never stop vibrating and shaking within you, so do not vilify your heart when it quakes."
- Bianca Sparacino in A Gentle Reminder
I do not say this (write this?) lightly; you are the most wonderful thing to ever exist, in the most wonderful place to ever exist. To be alive and to be human is possibly the great lottery to ever achieve. I recently went down a rabbit hole of the actual odds of being born...Yes, I am very aware there are probably much better ways I could spend a Friday night but welcome to the mind of Donovan Beck and the impetus of the Vulnerable Human Newsletter! Anyways, let's begin because I don't think most of us truly understand the immense odds stacked against us to arrive here, inside of these bodies we have been gifted with for years.
Here is the big number for you. Are you ready? 1 in 10^2,685,000. Not used to scientific notation? That is 1 in 10 followed by 2 million 685 thousand zeros! Crazy right?! Alright, here is part of the breakdown; also, if you are curious about all of the numbers, this info comes from a study by Harvard professor Dr. Ali Binazir1 in 2012; I'll share all the info and links in the notes! But let's start small and say that the likelihood that your dad meets (just meets, this gets important later) your mom is 1 in 20,000; the likelihood that they even talk to each other is probably around 1 in ten. Talked enough to like each other 1 in 100? What about that they stay together long enough to have a child? Okay, so let's say that we are already realistically at about 1 in 40,000,000, a huge number, but we are just getting started! Children, look away. It's time to start talking about the birds and the bees! For those of you that don't know, per ejaculation, a man will release around 4 trillion sperm cells. Throughout your mom's life, she will have roughly around 100,000 egg cells, and so what are the odds that one of each cells will meet and perfectly conjoin to become a human? 1 in 400 quadrillion!!! But oh my, oh my, we are just getting started!!! Because we are taking in all the variables here folks, which means we also have to account for all of the ancestors that came before you and met and had children who had children who also had children who ALSO, ha... okay, you get the point, we have to consider all of the people and things that had to happen even to reach your parent's meeting before you. And with all of this in mind, we get to the absolutely unimaginable number of 1 in 10^2,685,000 chance that you were to be born.
Okay, okay, but why bring this up? And no, the answer isn't "Donovan needs to find better things to do on his Friday evenings" I bring this up due to a recent conversation I was having with a friend, who is a wonderful moment of openness, explained, "sometimes I feel like I just take up space, like all of this is a fluke." Like I said at the beginning of this, you are the most wonderful thing to ever exist, in the most wonderful place to ever exist; your being here is no accident; there is no likelihood odd that you were going to end up here, no sum chance that we would be gifted to you. My religious friends like to call this "a miracle," my science friends, "the human anomaly" I prefer to call this the universe at work. We were gifted with you and all your innumerable odds for a reason, and it is perfectly okay to be still trying to figure out what that reason is; trust me, I still am doing the same. You do not just take up space; you are the space we have been gracefully giving, the soul that was destined from generations of odds to become whole. Or, at the very least, destined to pursue becoming whole. I chose the quote from Bianca Sparacino's book, Gentle Reminders2 to open up this chat because it relates to one of my favorite concepts. You are born of water, of atoms in constant movement, the same type of movement as the stardust that found its way into your body over generations (I'm serious, look it up.). You were made to move, to feel all the feelings, to embrace the incredible odds that were stacked against you from the start.
And the most beautiful thing of it all? Even with the 1 in 10^2,685,000 chance, you would end up here? You won; you won the lottery with odds so low that there are fewer atoms in the galaxy than zeros in the number, you won, and we were gifted with the most wonderful human, that is you.
So what now? Embrace that, take up space, move like water...
And live beautifully.
Sent with love,
Donovan A. Beck