To be alive is to struggle.
Every living being carries a torch inside them that hasn't been extinguished in 3 billion years.
Let me give you some perspective.
1,000 seconds is slightly more than 15 minutes.
1,000,000 seconds is slightly more than 9 months
1,000,000,000 seconds is slightly more than 31 years
3,000 years ago, we are experimenting with tools and civilization
3,000,000 years ago, the parents of humanity are crawling through trees for food
3,000,000,000 years ago, the last common ancestors of humans and amoebas are siblings.
3. Billion. Years.
If the average human lifespan is 70 years (these days), then the history of my genome reaches back roughly 43 million generations. Of course, evolution used to happen faster, at least in the human line. Small mammals reproduce faster than large ones.
So... maybe 70 million generations? Maybe 100? Who actually knows?
Evolution is not a story for a single lifetime. People, dogs, and trees don't actually change that much from birth to death. Parents know this all too well. The changes happen from one generation to the next, the new and strange replacing the old and familiar. Our children teach us what comes next.
I am a young man. I am told, by advertisers, by my parents, by government officials:
do not breed. We have too many mouths, you'll lose your freedoms, you won't have the money to spend. You'll be beholden to another creature, one just as smart as you but with none of your calming experience. And don't you really want this shiny car, this expensive nightclub, this life of high-flying irresponsibility?
Fuck you. Calmly, politely, but nonetheless, Fuck you. So what, the Mormons and Rednecks and Mexicans get to populate the future, and I'm supposed to sit it out? My torch isn't good enough? My genetics are fantastic, thank you very much. Ok, not a huge fan of direct tropical sunlight. Small spaces give me fits. But i'm allergy free, free of inheritable diseases, smart, tall, blonde, and sweet.
I'm not just gonna sit the next round out because it's the polite thing for people who look like me to do. I'm gonna breed, and whatever it is that makes me ME, well, that little bastard's gonna survive, thrive, and multiply. I owe that much to those who came before.
Because my ancestors struggled to make me exist. They spilled blood in wars, for freedom and glory and the right to live. They spilled tears over lovers and brothers and mothers lost and found. They spilled sweat breaking the earth and raising monuments and feeding their families. Generation after generation of the petty struggles that feel so much more real to us than the abstract threats that loom today.
For the threats today are not the threats of yesteryear. Once, the dangers in life were the wolf pack that stalked the forest by your farm; the village in the next valley full of people with strange customs and bloodlust; that storm looming on the horizon 5 weeks before harvest season. They were comprehensible, relevant, personal. Our struggle was real, and when we were victorious, we reveled.
Our struggle today is mere comprehension of the threats we face. Global warming, groundwater heavy metal contamination, genetic mutation, loss of biodiversity, unstable food webs. How does one work against such forces? Where do I put my lever? Where do I muster my troops? The opinions are legion, and often contradict each other.
However we face these problems, I want to be on the ground, doing something, anything. And if the struggle continues beyond my feeble lifespan (spoiler: it will) part of me will struggle on. My children. They will be different from me, sometimes strange, sometimes hilarious, but they will also be the same. They will care. Because that's what life does.
