I never thought of it in that way…
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
Kinda heavy stuff there. Of course, I can’t help thinking naughty thoughts like, “Where exactly did all those potential people go?” When compared to grains of sand in the Sahara, I envision armies and armies of pants that stand up by themselves.
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