So far this blog has had song lyrics as it's headings. Today, although this quote has been used in a song, it is a quote from a book. It is a quote by Richard Dawkins.
The full quote is thus:
"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 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 exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of those stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"
I believe that this version is a bastardised version of Dawkins mixed with Tuomas Holopainen, songwriter for Nightwish.
Nightwish are releasing a new album called Endless Forms Most Beautiful. It's based on the evolution of the world and the name is taken from Charles Darwin:
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
When I found out what the concept behind Nightwish's album was going to be I instantly knew it was going to make me question things. I'm one of those delightful people who dwell on their own mortality for a little bit too long and end up on swathes of panic that cannot be helped. Dying is a scary thing, but it's something that we are all going to need to face sooner or later. I think part of my current fear is based on my age. I'm still relatively young and I don't want to die. I am not ready. Which is perfectly understandable. But I think I need to be ready. Death does not make an appointment, but I want to be ready.
Going back to the Dawkins quote. "...that makes us the lucky ones." I've never thought of it that way. Of all the possible variations of my mum and dad, it was me that popped out. I didn't need to, it could have been someone else. Someone totally different to me, someone capable of stepping into this would and making a difference from the start. But it was me instead.
What I have decided, that instead of dwelling on my inevitable betrayal of life, is to make it a good one. I suppose that's all we ever want, a good life. But in what way? Well I want to make my life mean something. So far we do not have the meaning of life, I truly believe we are just a brilliant accident. Not to say brilliant accidents haven't happened anywhere else in the universe, but we are all we know about until the Vulcans arrive.
The other song lyric I want to comment on here relates to the last paragraph. This one is from Ayreon, a music project that always makes me think. "The meaning of life is to give life meaning." It's all we can do. And it's what I'm going to do. So I need to stop dwelling and find that meaning.
I'm looking forward to finding it out.
