It takes a village

Many persons know the story of the swallow which had entangled its claw, by some means, in a piece of thread fastened to a spout on the wall of the Collége des Quatre Nations, at Paris. Its strength being exhausted, the bird hung at the end of the thread, which it kept raising in the endeavours to fly, uttering plaintive cries. All the swallows from between the Pont des Tuileries and Pont Neuf, and perhaps still further, gathered together, to the number of some hundreds, all uttering cries of pity and alarm. After some hesitation and a tumultuous conference, one of them seemed to have found a means of delivering their unfortunate companion, and no doubt communicated it to the others. They placed themselves in order, and each coming in turn, struck the thread with the beak, somewhat after the fashion of ’tilting at the ring.’ These thrusts, aimed at the same point, succeeded each other every moment, and greatly incommoded the poor captive; but in a short time the thread was severed, and the poor bird set at liberty! The flock remained till night, chattering all the time; but in a tone which had nothing of inquietude, and was expressive only of mutual congratulation.

– Ernest Menault, The Intelligence of Animals, 1869

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i am alive.

Life. I love being alive. Of all the trillions of sperm and billions of eggs available during the time of any conception, the eventual interdependent amalgamation is statistically infinitesimally improbable. Following fertilization we still struggle making it unscathed towards the light of existence.

But here we are.

We were the sperm with the strongest tails, the highest-octane mitochochondria; the egg whose fallopian flight best descended to the integral location for a genetic chest bump.

Regardless of your religious options, adoption, upbringing in thinking or plowing fields with oxen I rate this the greatest knowledge that led me to the edge of existential appreciation.

The opportunity to be conscious, to feel with our fingertips the grits of sand crashing and passing the crests of our fingerprints, to have a skin color and bodily imperfections; the opportunity of opinion to have a favorite anything, to type a poem in a periodic sonic environment of on-beat clocks ticking off-beat with one another. It is simply miraculous that we get to breathe. There is probably a better chance of winning the lottery every day of your life than being alive in the first place.

I don’t know if it’s possible to NOT exist… But isn’t it cool that we …do?