I think maybe it’s worth highlighting that nothing I’m saying here is particularly novel, nor do I even endorse a lot of the sentiment I’m about to express. Others have said what I’m about to say before, and almost certainly better than I have.

I think it’s still worth writing this for two reasons.

Firstly, for me, it’s important to recognize the universe as it is. What I think and feel is part of the universe; as are the feelings and thoughts of other people. I think the act of recognition is a key part of being alive.

Secondly, and probably more importantly, a lot of my blog is for me. I’ll probably reread this in a few months and get some value out of it. That alone makes writing this worth it.

Privilege and Luck

The size of the world is so staggering we often don’t even think about it, and when we do we fail to comprehend what is happening. 

About 117 billion humans are estimated to have ever lived.

And humanity is only two hundred thousand years old. Half of all people who have lived were born within the last 2,000 years. And yet, the global population only surpassed one billion people in 1805.

About a year ago, and some change, I was sitting in Vermont making jokes about an anthropomorphic lightbulb, using technology people 70 years ago would never have imagined — and then 15 months passed and it feels almost incomprehensible how much and yet how little life I fit into all that time. 

I’ve lived over 22 years, and that’s wild and I can’t really wrap my head around all the experiences I’ve had. My brain literally cannot encode all those days into memory, so years and years of eating lunch or sitting idly have been lost forever.

We can barely understand the totality of our own lives; how can you ever hope to comprehend the magnitude of 117 billion other people? How can you even approach an understanding of what it means that the median person was born within the last 2,000 years? That this means an astronomical number of mothers and fathers had to outlive their children.

Over, and over, again.

There are so many people I could have been and mostly it would have been terrible to live those other lives. Most of the time I’d just die before I even got anywhere.

Isn’t it unfair to all those billions of people who had to die early, or suffer terribly, that for all the advantages I’m afforded I mostly squander them? For much of the spring I just laid in my room and felt terrible. For most of the summer I floundered about, unable to do normal tasks any other person would have been able to do with ease.

There are explanations, of course.

Maybe I have some kind of anxiety; at least when it comes to writing cover letters, for some reason. It does seem I have adhd. Getting broken up with made me depressed for a bit. 

It’s not like it’s some core failing of mine that someone did a bad job ending our relationship. I didn’t choose to have my neurochemistry operate the way it does.

But it doesn’t change the fact that if everything that’s been given to me had gone to someone else, it might have been better for the world. It’s not my fault things turned out this way, but that doesn’t change the reality that if someone else had been born me, everyone’s life might have been better.

Wouldn’t someone else have been able to do something incredible with all I have?

And it’s not just that I was depressed for a month, or maybe have adhd; it feels like something is deeply broken at my core. 

The human brain is supposed to register itself as such, and it seems mine just refuses. Some of the time, anyway. I just don’t know how to hold onto reality properly. Perhaps I never did — and year after year I fall further and further away from any real grasp of what it means to exist.

I have money and education, and it seems I’m not leveraging it into very much. Maybe one of those one hundred billion other people could have cured cancer or solved hunger, if only they’d had what I have. 

It doesn’t even have to be so grand. 

Wouldn’t someone else have just lived better than I have?

Wouldn’t someone else have just existed properly?

Shouldn’t I have been someone realinstead?

Shouldn’t I have been someone who’s okay?

What a waste of atoms. 

They could have been put to better use.

Doesn’t this all seem deeply unfair?

And I guess I don’t think this is some grand cosmic failing of mine — or at least when I do, I don’t think I should think this way — not really, anyways — but still, isn’t it so sad that people alive today, and all throughout history, have had to suffer so deeply? 

And for all my advantages I’m not even rich or smart enough to stop my family from one day dying either, just like all those people thousands and thousands of years ago.

I guess sometimes that just makes me really sad. Along with the thought that so many people didn’t get the chance to really live.

I wish they had.

I hope I’ll make the most of what I have too. I don’t really owe anyone anything; but I still would like to try. Try to do a bit of good and try to live as best as I can. For myself and for all the people who didn’t get the chances I have.

And I hope if you sometimes feel the way I sometimes do, you don’t always feel this way. Life can be pretty grand too, even if occasionally it feels like someone else should have gotten mine.