Last weekend I reached the ripe old age of 24. As nice as being 23 was I don’t think I’ll do it again, far too much self-discovery for my taste.
I woke up upside down in bed, not due to any unusual karma Sutra gift, but because we had been having issues getting to sleep during the night. If we ever feel restless or fidgety, we’ve realized what throwing the pillows to the foot bed and sleeping the other way around. I’m sure there is a science to how it works, but it a tried and tested technique to get some sleep. Try it, tell me I’m wrong.
When I looked in the mirror that morning I felt like my age had finally caught up with my face. I’ve had effectively the look of a 24 year old since I was 15 due to my early “flowering”. I realize flowering may be the wrong word, unless you can consider chin fuzz petals. I look at the marks and the bumps that give character to a pretty bog standard face. The chicken pox scar on the bridge of my nose, my slightly wonky eye that looks inwards when I’m tired, the green flecks in my mostly brown eyes and the battlefield of small scars from year of blackheads and zits that once sat on my billboard of a fore head. My greasy hair an organic twist of shot tendrils that shoot of in various directions, thanks to the wax I didn’t wash out from the day before. For the life of me I don’t know when I started getting nose hairs, and I’m concerned what will come at me that will require them to be useful.
I think about the years that hammered this body into the lanky frame that stands in boxer shorts on a cold bathroom floor and realize for the first time of the day how ridiculously luck I am. Some of the biggest internal fight I have with myself are about my self-worth. I don’t have much in the way of a career, opting to skip University to go straight into work. Since then I bounced from meaningless office job to office job, finding my foot hold in my ability to do anything I’m asked to do. I recently took a hit by choosing to leave the job I had been working towards for over a year due to the stress it was causing me, which left we walking away with a dent in my ego and a lot of uncertainty about what I was doing with my life.
What rips me back from this path of thought every time, however, is the ridiculous and infinite coincidences that brought me to the bathroom mirror in the first place.
*DEAR READER: this next section has been known to cause symptoms of existence crisis and internal screaming*
When I consider the fact that for me to have been at this point in my life I will have avoided or been protected from thousands of life threatening incidences that many other people have fallen foul of. I have never had a serious illness or disease, nor had an injury that 4 weeks in plaster has not fixed. I have all my limbs and senses and I live in (though the Daily mail would have you think otherwise) one of the most developed countries in the world. I have a loving family and a fiancée who is the love of my life. I’ve had pets, gifts, adventures and holidays. And this is just the last 24 years.
Before that I was conceived in the first place (which according to my birth month was probably around Valentine’s Day #Gross) by 2 people out of 5.71 billion (world population of 1994) across the world. And don’t even get me started on the whole sperm to egg at the right place at the right time, far too much maths for me to play around with. On top of that remember that this had to happen countless amounts of times for your parent, grandparents and all the way back to the beginning of the human race for you to be here. That’s right your grandparents had sex. And not because they wanted to make your mum or dad. They did it because they liked it.
All together is accumulates to the point that me being alive is around 1 in 102,685,000 (Thanks to the picture I found below for doing the maths, have a read to see how ridiculous those odds actually are). When I sit in the gloom of doubting my self-worth or thinking about whether I should be here or not, I remember this fact and thank all the cosmic, impossible coincidences that have got me to this point. Now I’m going to go and enjoy the last slice of caterpillar cake.
Besides, that fact that I’m here is a miracle. Now you go be one as well.
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