Saturday, July 16, 2016

Smart Coffee

There are between 6.5 and 7.25 billion people on the planet. All of them are different. Each of them is different from every other one of them. That’s hardly a new thought but one that is comforting.

So here I am having a smart coffee at a cafe on a busy intersection in one of the world’s great capitols with nothing better to do.  People are going by showing off their differences.

That guy standing near the street sign wrangling a schnauzer is not just a lapsed Catholic.  He is not just a 35-year-old with a Ben Gurion haircut.  He isn’t just fond of blueberry smoothies.  He is not just a thousand other things he is not just being or just being.

For, if everyone is different it must also be true that everyone who ever lived is different from everyone else who ever lived.

I doesn't take much to figure that everyone who did live beat some spectacular odds. There are so many permutations that we will soon run out of zeroes to calculate the odds over the generations for any of us with all our unique differences to have been born at all.

The mere act of you being you and me being me requires beating the odds starting at one in 400 trillion
(4×1014); essentially zero. The math is easy with a few assumptions but zero in every case.

And … to make one phenomenon a paradox of another … we mostly come in pairs.  We are drawn to be in relationship with at least one other person.

Okay. I'm just one guy enjoying a smart coffee in a cafe on a busy intersection in a world capitol. All those people going by and I share a special something of incalculable proportions while being utterly unique and paired up to boot.

It’s true occasion for gratitude.


Just Sayin’

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have been acutely aware of your theorem "The mere act of you being you and me being me requires beating the odds starting at one in 400 trillion (4×1014); essentially zero. The math is easy with a few assumptions but zero in every case," for many years.

After my parents were married in 1939, they went to California on their honeymoon. My older brother was conceived there, and in spite of my Father's desire to make their home in CA, he bowed to my Mom's wishes and they moved back to SD.

Your theorem comes into play when I realize that had they stayed in CA, I probably would never have been conceived.