Usha
Ever so often every one of us goes through the "life sucks" moments.We cannot find a purpose to keep us going, a reason to smile or something that makes any sense for us to get up from bed and face yet another day. We forget the great blessing called "life" and how special we are to be the chosen ones to be endowed with the ability to appreciate it and value it.Have you ever thought about how rare life is? In the millions of planets in the universe, there are perhaps very few with life on it and as far as we know so far we are perhaps on the only planet that supports life and what more we are surrounded by so many forms of life to make it so beautiful, tasty and sweet smelling, a star studded roof and a moon to inspire poetry. Being here, just being alive is reason enough to feel "special". if you find other reasons it is a bonus.
Next time you need a reason to feel special just remember what evolutionary biologist and author of brillaint works like The Selfish Gene and The blind watchmaker Richard Dawkins says in this article:

"The origin of life on this planet — which means the origin of the first self-replicating molecule — is hard to study, because it (probably) only happened once, 4 billion years ago and under very different conditions from those with which we are familiar. We may never know how it happened. Unlike the ordinary evolutionary events that followed, it must have been a genuinely very improbable — in the sense of unpredictable — event: too improbable, perhaps, for chemists to reproduce it in the laboratory or even devise a plausible theory for what happened. This weirdly paradoxical conclusion — that a chemical account of the origin of life, in order to be plausible, has to be implausible — would follow if it were the case that life is extremely rare in the universe. And indeed we have never encountered any hint of extraterrestrial life, not even by radio — the circumstance that prompted Enrico Fermi's cry: "Where is everybody?"

"Suppose life's origin on a planet took place through a hugely improbable stroke of luck, so improbable that it happens on only one in a billion planets. The National Science Foundation would laugh at any chemist whose proposed research had only a one in a hundred chance of succeeding, let alone one in a billion. Yet, given that there are at least a billion billion planets in the universe, even such absurdly low odds as these will yield life on a billion planets. And — this is where the famous anthropic principle comes in — Earth has to be one of them, because here we are."

"If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible. But if you are alive (as you manifestly are if you are about to step into a spaceship) you needn't bother to go looking for that one planet because, by definition, you are already standing on it."

So you see , how special we are, each one of us? Enjoy life while you have the chance!Celebrate this rare thing called LIFE.
7 Responses
  1. Inder Says:

    true. life is to be happy. we don't need reasons.
    evolution theories and space science are among the most interesting and at the same time most confusing of all :)


  2. rads Says:

    yea, life is unique and precious. :-)
    on the flip side "damn, not a soul off the face of this earth will ever understand all this trouble I am in" ;-))


  3. Shiv Says:

    Wow Usha...tat was an amazing post


  4. Mahadevan Says:

    It is sheer coincidence, when I am typing these comments, today's Times of India Headline reads that NASA scientists find water in Mars and they therefore believe in the existence of life in the Red Planet.

    To be one among the most evolved of living beings in Nature's scheme of things is certainly a great privilege and should not every alternative moment of ours be a thanks giving one to the Ultimate?

    And yet, we do not find satiety in what we have and what we are and we look for the one we don't have. Shelley says meaningfully:

    'We look before and after
    And pine for what is not'


  5. yeah we really are special people!


  6. Usha Says:

    Inder:But Dawkins says it quite simply doesnt he?

    Rads:heheheh..But are you sure that people ON the face of this earth understand - each of us is so unique, arent we?

    Shiv: :)

    Mahadevan:Who was it, douglas adams who said:"The best proof that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is that they have made no attempt to contact us."?
    If they existed they probably want to keep away from us?
    Do you think Martians may be more war crazy than us?
    Hm...I wonder what their winter wear line looks like.
    Hehehe, just some random thoughts..

    STS: You can say that again!


  7. Anonymous Says:

    In theory yes one can appreciate life all the time. But in reality I think there a plenty of life sucks moments and what's the point of all this moments...esp when you think of the madness out there - war, people suffering from diseases, disasters and what not. When I see a flower bloom or when I look at the ultrasound photos of my baby and look at him now playing away - I find the whole process of creation/life so amazing...so unbelievable...and yet can't escape the negative feelings either...