You Are a Miracle

Truth be told, I cry in public sometimes.  I estimate that 95% of this crying comes from uncontrollable laughter, which, for me, is one of life's greatest gifts, like mango and avocado, and also tortilla chips dipped in guacamole consisting of mango mixed with avocado.

The other 5%, well, that is another kind of tears, sometimes out of sadness, but not always.  This variety of tears can be rendered uncontrollable with well-timed music (or poorly-timed, depending on one's desire to cry).  Films like E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial - I just get so triggered by the music at the end.  If I watch Elliott hug E.T. good-bye on mute, I'm just like "Bye E.T.," but turn up the volume, and I'm a mess.  Don't even get me started on the ending of Coco (the combination of my wife's tears and my own required more tissues than were available).

There is yet another variety of tears, which show up during public speaking (Yay!  I mean, public speaking is just so easy otherwise).  Giving a eulogy at a funeral (or trying to) can bring tears to even the most hardened individual.  As a 'soft' individual, I am batting a perfect 1.000 for crying during eulogies at this time of writing, and I see no chance of that success rate changing.

The weird thing is that I probably cried most trying to deliver a speech at my own wedding (insert marriage joke here).  Honestly, it was such a joyful occasion, and yet, I simply fell apart in the moment.  I have come to realize that I cry not really due to sadness, but actually, due to truth.

I find that truth has the power to overcome me.  If I am standing at a podium, speaking about stuff I do not truly believe in, it will not be touching to anyone listening, and it will not make me feel any kind of emotion other than, perhaps, boredom.  Words that are true to me, and deeply meaningful to me, are hard for me to speak out loud.  That is why I will not record an audio-book for this or anything else I ever write.

This brings me to this short piece, which I will never attempt to read aloud again, because there is just no point.  It reduces me to a sobbing mess, even in the absence of background music.  I remember feeling pride as I wrote it, and then nearly cried trying to read it to my class.  Then I really cried when I tried to read it at a community 'spoken-word' event.  So, I am done.

Feel free to read these words aloud to someone you love...

You Are a Miracle 

"Consider all of the extremely improbable events that led to your being here today...

After the Big Bang, matter needed to become complex enough to form stars.  These stars burned for billions of years, and it was necessary that many of them ended their life cycle in supernova events, which led to the formation of new stars, more complex matter, and planets that orbit these stars.  Of these planets, some were in habitable zones - not too hot, not too cold.  For life to evolve, a conducive chemical soup was necessary, and then, perhaps the most unlikely event of all: one that synthesized a single-celled organism.  Then came evolution, whereby more and more complex organisms evolved - each necessary species along the line managed to avoid extinction before its critical mutation that led to the next branch in the tree.  Finally, the human race emerges (perhaps the most fragile form of all life thus far), and manages to survive millennia of hardship.  And if that were not enough, of all of the billions of humans to have come and gone, your parents met, and pro-created you.

How can you not feel at least a little bit special?  How can you see your existence as anything less than a miracle?

I think this is what is most beautiful about life: a seemingly endless set of possibilities out of which one actual outcome emerges.  I cannot help but have a certain affinity for each and every one of these improbable outcomes.

In this frame of mind, everything is worthy of attention, every topic deserves to be studied.  It seems to me that this is the place where science should begin."