Breath in your lungs, a Beat in your heart, and a Light in your eyes

Have you ever stopped to contemplate the sheer impossibility of your own existence?

Think about it.  The Universe, as far as we can see it, is at least 92 BILLION light years in diameter. And light is the fastest thing we know of: It takes it only 8 minutes and 20 seconds to traverse the 92.6 MILLION miles from the Sun to the Earth.  In a year, a beam of light travels 5,879,000,000,000 - almost 6 TRILLION - miles.  And that's just one year - our Universe is 92 billion of these years across.

There's a whole hell of a lot of space out there.  Much more than our brains can even begin to comprehend.  And it looks like our Universe gets bigger all the time.

In that space, as far as we can see, there are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion trillion) stars.  We see more all the time as their light reaches us.  Each of those stars can easily have as many planets surrounding it as our own star.  Many of them probably have a lot more planets than our solar system.

That's a whole hell of a lot of planets.  Once again, far more than our brains can possibly understand.  There is truly little doubt that thousands or millions or even billions of those innumerable planets have conditions similar to our own Earth, and could support life exactly as we know it.

Given all this, is it even possible to calculate the odds that you, the person reading this, are alive and conscious in this time and in this place?  On the scale of the Universe, it isn't even a stretch to say that your existence is impossible.

Yet, here you are.

What's more, the atoms that make up your body are the very same atoms found in the stars.  You are literally made of Stardust!  And every single cell in that body is replaced once every 7 years.  No part of your physical makeup that was present when you were a child is present now.  Every cell has been replaced, multiple times if you're a more seasoned traveler.

So the next time you can't seem to get out of your head; can't quite shake that dark mood, just remember: You are a ghost driving a self-regenerating organic vehicle made up of the stars.  Your very existence in this time and place is a miracle of unimaginable magnitude.

And smile.  As with all situations and objects that have ever existed, this, too, shall pass.