Precious Opportunity
A cosmic reflection on the improbability, beauty, and invitation of being alive on Earth at this time
Sometimes in January, when I remember, I make New Year’s intentions. What typically happens, though, is that I forget them often enough that by February they’ve become vague memories, and by March they’re fully gone. So intention-setting doesn’t always work for me.
What I’ve found more insightful, and ultimately more empowering, is to invoke the spirit of January itself and the power of fresh beginnings from a larger, big-picture perspective.
The month of January takes its name from the ancient Roman god Janus, the two-faced deity who presided over transitions of all kinds: births and deaths, natural and human cycles, and the passages and thresholds between spaces. Janus stands firmly in the present moment while looking simultaneously toward the past and the future. In this way, he embodies the original impulse behind New Year’s resolutions, the desire to reorient one’s life toward new directions and possibilities.
It occurs to me that this is also our situation in what I call Deep Cosmology. Here we are invited to contemplate the vast cosmic history that has led to this moment while, at the same time, attending to the energies and tendencies arising within us now. These are the currents that can help shape and align us toward a more vibrant future. Deep Cosmology, then, brings together the long cosmological shaping of this moment with the depth of the present, in conscious partnership with what is trying to emerge next.
This was the spirit in which I wrote the short piece that follows more than ten years ago. It was a way of harnessing the New Year’s energy of beginnings while honoring the wildly improbable cosmic grace that has brought us to this moment.
Some theorists in modern cosmology have described this improbability through what is sometimes called the Cosmic Jackpot hypothesis, the idea that an almost unimaginable confluence of factors has resulted in a universe that is “just right” for the flourishing of life. There are many interpretations of this idea and many hypotheses about why such a situation might exist. I take a more pragmatic approach. I simply appreciate the countless conditions that have converged to make this moment available to us at all, and the precious opportunity each of us holds within it.
Enjoy.
Precious Opportunity
Congratulations. You made it. Welcome! Out of the estimated ten million or more species of life on Earth, you’re here as a Homo sapiens, one of the “wise ones.” In the next few paragraphs, let me tell you a little about what it means to be human from a cosmic perspective, and what it took for you to be here right now.
First off, you picked a great universe. Out of the perhaps infinite multiverse, you ended up in a cosmos that has just the right conditions for carbon-based life like ourselves to exist. Our universe holds a delicate balance between gravitational and electromagnetic forces, and the energy levels in carbon atoms are just right for them to be forged in stars.
Have you seen the universe next door? Its expansion rate is a tiny fraction slower than ours, and the whole thing recollapsed before any stars could form. What a mess.
Not only did you pick a good universe, you chose a pretty good part of it to show up in. Most of the universe is — guess what? — empty space and dark energy. After that, most of what remains is dark matter, whatever that turns out to be. You just happen to be part of the complex fraction made of heavy elements created by stars.
You’re part of the 0.03%. Well done.
Let’s take a look at the history of those complex atoms that make up your body. First of all, they weren’t there at the beginning of the universe. They were made later, in stars. Let me repeat that last part.
The atoms in your body were made in stars.
Yes — those beautiful shining points in the night sky are where your atoms were born. Here’s the short version.
In the beginning of the universe, nearly fourteen billion years ago, the cosmos was filled mostly with hydrogen and helium gas. From this primordial sea, the first stars formed, living bright but brief lives. In their cores they forged elements such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, and iron through nuclear fusion.
The rest of the complex elements that make up your body were created through more spectacular cosmic processes: supernovae, neutron star mergers, and cosmic-ray fission. The cosmos, it seems, has a taste for the dramatic.
As these elements formed, they were scattered throughout the galaxy by supernova explosions, interstellar winds, and galactic tides, eventually blending into vast clouds of gas and dust.
These processes spread new elements across the galaxy much like a farmer enriches soil with fertilizer and compost. From these enriched clouds, new stars formed, each generation born from more complex cosmic soil. Over time, heavy elements such as carbon, silicon, and iron gathered into solid planets like Earth.
The rich diversity of life we see today is only possible because earlier stars nourished the galactic soil and planted the elemental seeds from which life could grow, eventually forming organisms like ourselves who can appreciate the wonder of it all.
Now that we’ve introduced life, let’s explore what it took for you to be here as a complex life form.
Four billion years ago, life was simple. Literally.
The earliest organisms were likely prokaryotes, single-celled beings composed of little more than a membrane filled with organic fluid. Yet they spread, multiplied, and diversified into perhaps a billion species over Earth’s history, developing nuclei, specialized organelles, photosynthesis, respiration, reproduction, and countless ways of moving, sensing, and transforming the planet.
Imagine the long thread of speciation that has led to you reading this text. Like a prokaryotic running back weaving down a crowded field, evolution sprouted limbs and fingers from flagella, lungs from gills, and skin and hair from earlier membranes and scales.
Whew. Take a breath. You’ve earned it.
Breathing is itself a rare capacity. Most organisms on Earth don’t have lungs; they exchange gases by other means.
Look around. The ability to see and sense the environment in complex ways is relatively recent in evolutionary history, emerging after the Cambrian explosion some 530 million years ago. While that may seem unimaginably ancient in human terms, it represents less than fourteen percent of life’s history on Earth.
For most of that time, organisms were groping through the world without eyes or ears to perceive it.
Additionally, most evolutionary experiments led to dead ends. Current estimates suggest that over 99.99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct.
So admire the winners of the evolutionary moment alive today, but don’t gloat for too long. Many of these species, including ourselves, continue to evolve and will one day transform or disappear in the blink of an evolutionary eye.
Evolution is a race with only provisional winners and no finish line.
Now that you’ve arrived as human, it’s no easy time either. Of the eight billion people on this planet, nearly eleven percent lack access to clean drinking water, and almost forty percent don’t have a toilet to use.
The good news is that most of us, over 85%, can read, and increasing numbers are gaining access to education, sanitation, and health care, though progress remains uneven and frustratingly slow in many parts of the world.
So let’s recap our situation from a slightly different narrative.
The atoms that make up your body began in the fiery furnace of the Big Bang nearly fourteen billion years ago. They swirled through stars for nearly nine billion years before gathering in the nebula from which the Sun and planets formed. From there, they became part of the Earth itself, were taken up by early organisms, and tumbled through countless life forms over nearly four billion years until they arrived as the flesh and blood you now inhabit.
These atoms have taken a million paths since their beginning. They’ve formed perhaps a trillion galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. They’ve shaped nebulae, asteroids, and planets, and perhaps life elsewhere in the cosmos.
But in all that vast history and immensity of space, it is statistically unlikely they have ever assembled into anything quite like you.
This “you,” the present expression of this cosmic unfolding is a rare pool of complexity in a vast arena of space, time, and darkness. This form of life has the astonishing capacity to be aware of itself and to wonder at the miracle of its own existence.
Even more remarkably, it can make conscious choices, influencing its own development and that of the countless beings sharing this planetary pageant.
This gathering of cosmic dust we call ourselves holds the potential to create new forms of beauty, imagination, and possibility never before seen by the cosmos, to foster compassion, to care for others and tend the Earth, to explore the nature of existence, and to discover new ways for the universe to know itself more intimately.
So tonight, walk outside and stand beneath the starry sky.
Stand under the arc of our ancient galaxy, surround yourself with the ancient light of stars and moon. Feel the fertile Earth beneath your feet and be still.
If you listen very carefully, you may hear this vast and mysterious universe asking:
What are you going to do with this precious opportunity of being human?
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