Chapter 2: Living the Impossible

The human imagination is a powerful thing.

It is a place where the impossible is made possible, where no idea is too outlandish or far-fetched, a limitless land where we can dream big fantastic dreams.

There is no doubt that though unreal, these dreams are still important. They have allowed us to overcome many obstacles in our world. Just take a look around you: your lamp, your computer, your cell phone; even the electricity flowing through these objects to give them function were at one point just dreams in the minds of inventors, designers and engineers.

But, like so many other things, the imagination is a double-edged sword.

It is when these dreams become more important to us than our realities, when we simply cannot possibly be happy, successful or fulfilled without them, that they become destructive forces in our lives.

We chase such dreams of excessive wealth and grandeur all the time, fantasizing about hill-top mansions and seaside villas.  We delude ourselves with promises like “if only I had that shiny new Lamborghini, then I’d finally be happy” or “my house must be at least 7 times bigger in order for me to be successful.”

The first step in learning how to love yourself is doing away with such delusions, or at least the ideals that you associate with them. All they do is contribute to the growing “gap” of ingratitude and leave you just as empty as before if and when they do become a reality.

“But how?” you may ask yourself, glancing out the window at your 10-year-old Daewoo.

“How can I stop wishing I had a Porsche?”

Simple: be grateful for what you do have. TIP: Don’t start with the Daewoo. Save the harder stuff for later.

Most of you reading this will be doing so on your home PC, which means not only do you have a PC, you also have electricity to power it and a high enough income to have been able to afford it. And let’s not forgot the most important bit of all: you can read!

Those four things alone already mean you’re better off than the majority of the world’s population. But I want to boil it down a little further. I want to nibble on the chewy centre of existence, instead of slurping my way through the hard outer layers. Forget the material for now. Let’s focus on the simplest thing that life offers us: living itself.

Do you know how improbable the fact that you, dear reader, are alive actually is?

Regardless of whether you do or not, I’m going to spend the rest of this post telling you anyway.

The Improbability of Existence

Every organism on the planet is made up of billions of cells, which are made up of infinitely smaller particles called atoms, which are in turn made up of even smaller constituents.  You, as a human (I hope), are but a sequence of these particles: a sequence that has 1 in 3 google-plex chance of existing. And when I say google, I don’t mean everyone’s favorite search engine; I mean the number with one hundred 0’s attached to it.

That’s right.

One hundred 0’s.

Keep the change.

Remember those elementary school math lessons where your teacher, let’s call her Ms Whippersnapper, wrote down equations on the blackboard? Well it would take little Ms Whippersnapper, armed with a piece of chalk and a shiny new pair of spectacles, approximately 20 minutes to write a google on the board.

Not too bad, right? Right. But you’re forgetting one thing: it’s a google-plex we’re talking about here. If my anecdotes of class-room mathematics have conjured up some bad childhood memories, then you best skip the next paragraph as it only gets worse. Infinitely worse.

Enter the googleplex, the google’s much bigger brother.

A googleplex is a google to the power of a google. In other words: it’s a google googles, a google times. Quite a mouthful perhaps, but is it really that big? Try asking Ms Whippersnapper who, after 1.584 X 10 to the power of 90 centuries, isn’t even half way.

How’s that arthritis holding up, Doreen?

Yes folks, we are talking about a very large number. A ridiculously large number. And I could go on for pages about just how ridiculous and large it really is, but for the purposes of maintaining some coherent point in this post I won’t just yet. Instead, I’m going to show you how this number forms the first step in helping you love yourself.

Yes, that’s right. Wipe that drool off your face and the glazed look from your eyes because we’re going to be breaking that age-old oxymoron of Math and real-world relevance.

What 1 in 3 Googleplex Means for You

I began this post by saying that you, as an individual, have a 1 in 3 google-plex chance of existing (in other words, for those who skipped the math, one in a very big number). That means that out of all the trillions upon trillions of potential people, you were chosen.

You. As in direct second-person.

Your eyes.

Your nose.

Your lips.

You.

And whether you believe this choice was up to chance or the work of your God doesn’t matter (I find both beliefs equally beautiful); my point remains the same: you are very very lucky to be alive.

So instead of only being “happy” when you get that nice new Ferrari, be overfilled with joy that our planet has just right conditions for human life. And instead of considering yourself a failure until you have three degrees and are pulling down $90K a year, know that you, once upon a time, won a swimming marathon for your very survival against countless millions of other competitors. And that makes you pretty damn successful in my book.

You may think you have a boring or difficult life. You may even think it a life not worth living at all. And you have every right to harbor these thoughts. But I’ve based my existence around the belief that every life, including my own, is worth living.  And although there are still many things I do not know and much wisdom I have yet to gain, nothing has ever felt more right for me than this.

So if you only take one thing away from this post, let it be this simple truth:

You are special.

Notes

i) As far as I know, there is no actual number for the probability of an individual human’s existence. This is most likely because it would be either too large and complex to calculate or infinite. I used “1 in 3 googleplex” as a substitute to prove my point of improbability. The fact that the actual number is much larger illustrates what I’m trying to say even better.

ii) The number “google” is actually spelled “googol”. I used the other spelling because it is much more recognizable.