Life first emerged on Earth over 4 billion years ago—or so we think—and for 2 billion whole years after that, everything that was life was a single-celled prokaryotic organism. This single cell eventually teamed up with another one, and that eventually led to you and me and elephants and butterflies and bonsai trees. But it took 2 billion years for one to go to two! I’ll be happy if I live a handful of decades more.
For context, there are approximately 30+ trillion (30,000,000,000,000) cells in the human body, generally operating in precise unison, jam-packed with wondrous amounts of information and endless generations of trial-and-error experience. There are an even greater number of bacteria making up our microbiome, holding about 500 times more genes than our human cells. For life to develop such harmonious complexity to allow me to write these words on a thin metal machine in a language you understand is neat, to say the least. For me to be able to think about the fact that I was in awe last night as a bunch of light beams coalesced out of our projector and created a fascinating1 tale of life on Earth, from the fierce motherly instincts of Maiasaura to the coevolutionary hop-scotch between butterfly eggs and leaves, makes me excited that I get to be here at all.
In case you need more perspective on the age of the universe and the brief, brief time that we get to hang out here on Earth, here you go.
We breathe oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Trees do the opposite. Water and sunlight happen to be good for us! We can eat a lot of the fruit that grows on trees. We are not here as some anomaly that is finding a way to survive on Earth despite the conditions—we are the Earth, and our wondrous biological capacities, from lungs whose surface area is the size of a tennis court to bones that are 5x stronger than reinforced concrete, should not be taken for granted. Our very existence and evolutionary design should be reason enough to want to be utterly synergistic in the way we interact with our wonderful home—looking for ways to interact with Earth in a mutually beneficial, flourishing manner instead of our current extraction- and exploitation-driven paradigm. After all, there have been times in the past when Earth was basically just a big volcano. Oh, and the dinosaur asteroid—that didn’t happen today, nor did an eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. So the long line at the grocery store isn’t too bad. In fact, it can be quite wonderful!
Over 99% of species that have ever existed are extinct, yet here we remain! We emerged at just the right evolutionary stage to reap the rewards of a habitable planet! We’re kind of blowing it at the moment, given our complex consciousness and whatnot, but this simple fact of having won some sort of lottery should provide a solid dose of appreciation for the vast, life-giving diversity that we seem hellbent on destroying. Like, among other things, will we be proud of being super into meat/inflicting untold amounts of suffering on other life forms in the future, given what we know?
All of last night’s perspective shifting reminded me of a conversation I had several weeks ago. I was at a work meeting where a lot of people from different organizations were meeting for the first time and one of the icebreaker questions involved condiments. The man I was paired with indicated that he usually prefers no condiments on his sandwiches, to which I responded, “oh, so just plain then.” He rebutted me in a lovely way: “Not just plain, fantastically plain!” I laughed out loud and felt joy in his correction—I’ve been meaning to reduce my use of the word “just” as much as I can because it’s often a fruitless qualifier. You’re just going for a walk? Just black is fine for your coffee? No! These things deserve the energy and attention that the 50-mile ultra run and the cardamom pumpkin spice latte do, and we can more easily give them what they deserve when we tap into the wonder of getting to do basically anything. Don’t diminish your activities, however small—embrace them with your full being! Who knew a dry sandwich could be so grounding?
This brief life together is a beautiful miracle. 40% off sitewide is damn good, but leaning into boundless love and appreciation for the life around us might take the cake.
though it was a little too focused on competition and the “battlefield” of evolution in lieu of the untold amounts of cooperation that drive life forward
I love how the picture of the evolution of life is a Fibonacci spiral! I read more about Maiasaura and how she is the protector. A lovely dinosaur indeed 🦕 Grateful for your blogs which bring lots of joy! ☀️