Bill Bryson writes that if we measured the age of our planet with outstretched arms, the bits of a nail file swipe off the tip of our left middle fingernail would just about represent the totality of man's time here on earth.
And this includes the dinosaurs.
Its a little scary really. It means everything we know and understand about art and orangutans, global economics, smelly socks, books and wars, stone age tools, aquariums, fission, pizza and cave paintings has happened as an eye blink in our tumbling universe of time and matter. Its scary because its difficult to imagine that our intense little planet with all its humanity, intellect and emotion exists as an eyeblink, one tiny moment of chance in spacetime. Like a flipped coin which landed on edge. It makes prioritizing anything feel just a little bit trite if you understand what i mean. Rationally and from a human perspective, it means all this, the universe, stars, the supernovas and white dwarfs, the black holes and the outstretched arms of 4 billion years all happened for the sake of a single nailfile swipe. How about that for context?
What it makes me want to do is live for chance. Like the planetary stew that absently cooked protozoan life or the first fish which found dry land nice, i want to float down white slopes on skis, scream when i jump and hit water, smell the tuberoses and feel the wind in my hair. Be totally responsible and irreverently care less at the same time. Teach. Learn. Eat like a pig.
And live like life is death.
And once in a while, like now, wonder if god prefers risk to monopoly.