3. Perspective

Actually, I’d like to make you feel just a little bit smaller (nothing personal).

In the history of Earth, there have been approximately 108 billion humans. If you are reading this, you are one of them: congratulations! But do you know how big that number actually is?

To help you out, I drew a picture of what 1 billion people looks like :

That picture represents almost all of the people who currently live in the USA and Europe combined. Now imagine that picture repeated 108 times, and you have every human being who ever lived.

Every celebrity, every historical figure, and every world leader is just one tiny dot among those billions. The VAST majority of those dots have been forgotten. And of course, one of those tiny dots represents you

108 billion dots, each with their own ideas about life, the world, the gods, death, sex, work, and purpose.

How many religions and beliefs have existed during those 108 billion lives? This chart lists 30 major religions that exist in the world today. This page on good old Wikipedia opens things up a bit, and there’s already too many to count. Imagine all the denominations, sects, cults and tribes that we’ve never even heard about from the last 200,000(ish) years. It’s a massive number.

I’m not just talking about spiritual beliefs though. I’m talking about scientific theories, political leanings, personal philosophies and all kinds of ideas that humans have. How many of those 108 billion dots lived their entire lives convinced that their ideas were right? How many of them laughed at the beliefs of their enemies, confident that they were on the side of Truth?

It’s impossible to know how many varieties of belief have ever existed, but one thing I could confidently say: no two people think exactly the same on everything. In that sense, it wouldn’t be completely ridiculous to suggest that 108 billion different worldviews have existed on planet Earth.

I don’t know about you, but all of this makes me question my own ideas. For example, I grew up within Christianity (and left it behind a little while ago). It’s one of the big religions, with around 2 billion people who identify as Christians in the world today. But Christianity has only existed for 1% of the time that humans have walked on Earth, and most of those 108 billion dots have never even heard of Jesus Christ.

Which means that our most closely held and personal beliefs should be starkly put into perspective.

So, after this long and depressing look at the state of things, where does it all leave me?

Which leads me to a couple of important final thoughts.

Firstly, it leads me to humility.

I think there is value in faith and mystery and spirituality. I really do. Even though I’m kind of a science nerd, I also believe in things that I can never prove or convince another person of. I’ve had experiences that I can’t put into purely rational terms, moments where I feel connected to something bigger than myself.

But I have grown allergic to certainty. I know that those personal experiences and beliefs could just be an illusion created by my own brain, and they could be just plain wrong. And I’m totally OK with that: I’m just one dot after all, with my own blind spots and mental biases.

When we put the Universe in perspective, it starts to seem kind of crazy to think that any one person, or group of people, could have the monopoly on truth.

Humility is knowing that we don’t know. It’s accepting our uncertainty as a central part of life, and asking what we can learn from the experiences, ideas, and beliefs of other people.

Secondly, it leads me to awe.

As I put time and space and my tiny existence into perspective, I could potentially get depressed about it. What does my life really mean in the grand scheme of things?

But I don’t (usually) feel that way.

Instead, I’m even more aware of how insanely unlikely and incredible it is that I’m alive in the first place. What are the chances?

Basically zero.

Even if you take the big-picture things for granted, and just calculate the odds of your parents meeting and making you, this great infographic declares that your chances of being alive are 1 in 102,685,000 (that’s a 10 with 2,685,000 zero’s after it).

All of this makes me incredibly grateful to be alive, and more determined to make the most out of the short time that I have.

It also makes me value life all the more. If our chances of being here are so small, and if everything is so temporary, it makes sense to look after our home and not treat everything like it’s going to be around forever. It makes sense to think about issues like global warming, the use of natural resources, and even space travel. It makes sense to work hard on equality, unity and respect for each other.

Finally, when I gain a greater perspective I feel completely amazed and in wonder at the fact that Reality is even a thing. It’s beyond the ability of my brain to comprehend. It’s literally impossible for me to fully grasp the world I live in. I just find myself hungry to learn more and explore further and discover new ways of seeing.

And if that isn’t a spiritual experience, I don’t know what is.