Book 7 of 24 of A Year of Books. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Read: March 2018.
The thing that drives me into reading these types of books is obsession. Obsession of the writer, the scientists, and the discoverers all throughout our time who studied every nook and cranny of the universe they can possibly find. In the context of the size of everything, it isn’t much. But in relation to our tiny human minds… It’s a lot more than we can ever know or remember or even understand.
While there are a million interesting/amazing/funny things in the book, here are a few points I believe we need some reminding of once in a while:
- It takes a huge amount of luck – more luck than we can ever imagine – for any living thing to be alive. So the fact that we woke up today, the fact that we even exist means we are so (damned) lucky.
Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you can make it. Getting here wasn’t easy I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
We are awfully lucky to be here… To attain any kind of life at all in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course. We enjoy not only the privilege of existence, but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better.
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