"You had a one in ten-to-the-power-of-twenty-seven-lakh chance of being born. And you made it."
Before you take your next breath, understand what had to happen for that breath to exist. The universe — cold, indifferent, ancient — had to get its physics right down to decimal points. Gravity sits at 9.8 metres per second squared. If it had slipped, even slightly, to 10, the chain that ends at you would have snapped before it began. There would be no you to mourn the loss. Just silence. Just an empty space in the shape of a person who never got the chance to be. Then the earth had to find its corner of the dark — eight light minutes from a star that burns at just the right temperature, just the right distance, close enough to warm water into rivers and far enough not to burn it into nothing. Eight light minutes. Not seven. Not nine. Eight. The universe held its breath and placed this rock exactly there, like it was saving a seat. And then your people had to survive. Every single one of them — your great-great-grandmother who crossed a famine, your great-grandfather who came ...