Here it is then: the sense that existence is just such a tremendous thing, one comes into it,Astonishingly, here one is, formed by biology and history, genes and culture, in the midst of the contingency of the world, here one is, one doesn’t know how, one doesn’t know why, and suddenly one doesn’t know where one is either or who or what one is either, and all that one knows is that one is a part of it, a considered and conscious part of it, generated and sustained in existence in ways one can hardly comprehend, all the time conscious of it, though, of existence, the fullness of it, the reaching expanse and pulsing intricacy of it, and one wants to live in a way that at least begins to do justice to it, one wants to expand one’s reach of it as far as expansion is possible and even beyond that, to live one’s life in a way commensurate with the privilege of being a part of and conscious of the whole reeling glorious infinite sweep, a sweep that includes, so improbably, a David, a Sue, two Bobbys, a Veronika, who, moved by powers beyond themselves, did something more improbable than all the improbabilities constituting their improbable existence could have entailed, did something that won them some other lives, a better life, a more-brilliant life, a life beyond all the ones they had wished for in the pounding obscurity of all their yearnings.
[Adapted from a soliloquy in Rebecca Goldstein's novel "36 Arguments for the existence of God."]
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