Right. This bundle of writing. It's something that I keep on my mind at all times. Something I keep written down so as not to forget it. I used a rough version of it recently, to talk to somebody who was feeling down. But I've decided that perhaps I can post it here as well. It's been a good pick me up ever since I've written it. And it's something I consider that can do no wrong. So. Here we go. The title of this piece, I just call it 0. [spoiler]Light. The predominant force in the universe. Light is everything. Even we, people, emit low levels of light. Light, is the speed limit of the universe. Light is many things, and it can do, many things. And yet, there is something strange about it. It weighs nothing. It's a particle with no weight. Almost. Scientists have done the math. Light does have weight. But the 1, and the 0's before it, are so immense, that one may as well call that weight, nothing. We come now, to you. How did you come to be? A mother and a father. Sperm, and an egg. You don't have to be good at math to understand this. Sperm, come in huge numbers. To make sure that offspring can be born. Thousands. Tens of thousands of them. And out of all those sperm, that huge cloud of competing cells, you were born. You were the only one who made it. You, were the only one, out of tens of thousands, to survive. To be born. Now consider, the circumstances of your mom and dad. Their chances of meeting. Their chances of staying together, when, over 50% of registered marriages end in divorce. Consider their chances, of having you at the right or wrong time? On the the wrong day, perhaps a few days over, and you wouldn't have been born. Consider the very chances of these two people, out of roughly 7 billion, meeting. Consider the chances, that out of them, those two people, they are, and were the only ones capable of creating you with the mixture of their genetic material. The odds are beginning to stack against you. Luckiness, may be a word that comes to mind. You got lucky to be born. Take it a step further. Consider all your relatives. How all of them were necessary to make the next relative of yours, who could in turn, make your mother and father, who could in turn, finally, make you. Your entire family tree. 10s of billions of sperm and thousands of people. Tens of thousands. And one final step. Consider the moon. How it formed and gave us tidal forces on our oceans. Consider our planet. The circumstances of which were needed for it to have water, and develop oxygen. Consider how many things were required for our planet to work, in any way shape or form, to harbour life. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to know, that the odds of such specific events occurring, are almost null. These events, specifically, will never be replicated again. Just like you. You cannot be replicated or replaced. You cannot roll the dice and be born again like a duplicate. The odds of our planet existing and being able to harbour life, and the specific scenarios required, are almost mathematically zero.When we consider your history, and your number, out of all the other possibilities, the odds of you existing, are mathematically almost zero. The universe says that you are nothing. That you are the number 0. And yet, despite all of it, here you are. You are not the number 0 because you exist. You are alive. Despite the odds played against you, despite every little thing that could go wrong or have happen differently, you, exist. You have a number. That number is 1. Set aside the notion of god or an afterlife. And assume, that this is it. You have one chance. This life, is all you have. You have one shot to get it right. You have one shot to make things right. And then, when your time is done, you die. You return to nothingness. You become 0 again. Ask yourself this question when days are hard. The universe says that you should be zero. The longer you live, the more odds you fight against every day that try to kill you. Your clock, your time, is ticking down. Despite it all, you still stand. You persist. You endure. You beat the odds and defy them. On the scale of the universe, you are labeled as 0. And yet here you are. Doing your thing. Just like light. You still have a meaning. The number 1. Ask yourself this now. If all the odds were stacked against you, and you defied all of them, becoming something, the number 1, from nothing, 0. Then why would you throw it away? Why would you willingly return to zero? Do you not owe yourself to stand up and keep going against all the odds that continue to grow against your favor? To defy them again and again and prove that you are not meaningless but instead say that you, and only you, are the only number that counts? Number 1. In the face of fear. In the face of sadness. Or pain. Consider death. Death is zero. Death is the end. And therefore, standing before it, pain, sadness, fear, anxiety, and loss, are novelties. When faced with absolutely nothing, absolute negative, push them aside and fight to keep going. Remember that with every breath you breathe and every step you take, you defy all odds. You are not nothing. You are somebody. You are something, that came from nothing. You are the number 1.[/spoiler]