December 10, 2010
What is the miracle of life?
Today as I sat in a Subway eating lunch I thought about all the chains of events that led me to be sitting at that particular table at that particular Subway at that particular moment. And I think about all the infinite mess that is the universe, and how in all of that fantastic cosmic wonder came this perfect world we call Earth, with its Moon, in a space system with conditions just right not only for life to exist, but for it to be abundant.And as science investigates the Universe we only discover how much more there is to uncover, how infinity vast is everything. Scientists have only recently determined by observing tiny fluctuations in the light of distant stars that there is very likely (as they suspected) other star systems with planets like Earth, meeting conditions similar to our own Solar system; and this is just from examining a fraction of the observable universe. All of this ... these distant planets, other star systems, sharing this universe or existing in some all together different universe ... are all connected with us by the same forces that shape this universe and all of existence that has been or will ever be. With all of those conditions being just right to make this perfect world possible … is that the miracle of life? But without love, how would any of that matter? The universe, with all of its endless possibilities makes love possible. Love is the miracle of life. Love gives context and meaning to the chaos and beauty of the infinite universe.
I think about all the choices that I've made, or that others have made that collectively have led me to be sitting at that Subway at that particular moment, and I also consider the infinite other destinations life could have taken me at that particular moment ... the very slight differences that would have only slightly altered the course of my life, or changed its direction entirely. And all of those other realities do exist as the fabric that makes up the infinite universe. This moment in time, is just one of endless other moments in regard to the unending scope of the universe and all of its possibilities, as everything that could have been, has or will become - all things are one.