Of course, this statistic is difficult to precisely measure due to a multitude of outlying factors including demographic and occupation. Some studies have shown this number to be closer to 80,000, but if you are born in an isolated village with a population of 1,000 people at any given time, the number of people you will meet throughout your life will be far lower than the average human. In addition to this sentiment, we are for obvious reasons not including interactions we have as an infant. For this purpose, let us consider that we meet an average of 30,000 people throughout our lives. How many of those individuals are met during sexual maturity? Barring teenage pregnancy (pre-18) and acknowledging that menopause occurs on average at the age of 51 (Northern American Menopause Society), this leaves 33 years of sexual maturity between the ages of 18 and 51 in females; approximately 42.3% of the average human life. For simplicity, let us mirror this statistic in the male sex. By using our statistic of 30,000 individuals we meet during our lifetime, we can infer that 12,690 of these individuals are met during sexual maturity. Therefore, the odds that your mother and father met each other during sexual maturity (presuming demographic is not a factor) is 1 in 25,380. However, now we must consider the odds that your father and mother did not only meet during sexual maturity, but they also grew close enough to have a child. According to the University of Bath, the average rate of anomalous mutual attraction between two individuals near the same age is 18 out of 100. The average odds that this mutual attraction results in a long enough relationship where offspring may be produced is 1 out of 100, meaning that the odds that the meeting between your parents resulted in children is 9 out of 5000. So far, according to these figures, the odds of your existence based on your specific parents meeting and mating is less than 1 out of 14,000,000. The average age of conception is 27 according to the CDC. At the age of 27, the average egg count for a woman is over 150,000 (Watson). According to Medical News Today, the average sperm count for a male lies between 40 million and 300 million per milliliter (Nall). In the interest of this example, we will use the former statistic of 40 million. For couples avidly trying to conceive, the odds a woman becomes pregnant is approximately 1 in 5 during any given ovulation cycle (Nazario). Keeping these figures in mind, the odds of the exact sperm encountering the exact egg during the exact time resulting in your precise conception is 1 in 30 trillion. Factoring in that it was your specific parents who conceived you, the genetic odds of you being born is less than one in 420 quintillion. This may seem like an astronomical number, but it can be broken down even further if you continue to consider the generations of genetic influence prior to you parents. They had to be conceived at these odds as well. Therefore, the chances that you are alive exponentially diminish as you calculate your ancestry. Even though these figures are not accurate because of the speculative nature to this argument, the data itself upon observation reveals the seemingly impossible chances that life should exist in the individual without some other unbeknownst influence aside from luck. According to a CNBC reporter’s interview with a Harvard statistics professor, the chance of winning the Mega Millions is 1 in 302,500,000 (Huddleston). Considering my argument above along with the fact that you live and breathe as a conscious and self-thinking person, you as an individual have already beaten the odds of winning the lottery several billion times over. You have won the opportunity to be alive. So, tell me this my friend: what are you going to do with your winnings? References:
FastStats - births and Natality. (2021, March 02). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/births.htm Huddleston Jr., T. (2021, January 21). Mega millions is up to $970 MILLION-THERE'S one way to up the odds of winning, according to a Harvard statistics professor. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/21/how-to-up-the-odds-of-winning-a-lottery-harvard-professor.html Nall, R. (2019, March 28). Normal sperm count: A guide to semen analysis. Retrieved from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324821 Nazario, B. (2020, February 19). Thinking about getting pregnant? How to prepare for pregnancy. Retrieved from https://www.webmd.com/baby/guide/getting-started-on-getting-pregnant#1 Northern American Menopause Society. Are we there yet? Navigate now with our guided menopause tour. Retrieved from https://www.menopause.org/for-women/menopauseflashes/menopause-symptoms-and-treatments/are-we-there-yet-navigate-now-with-our-guided-menopause-tour Roser, M., Ortiz-Ospina, E., & Ritchie, H. (2013, May 23). Life expectancy. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy Watson, S. (2018, June 6). Age and Fertility: What to know in your 20s, 30s, and 40s. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/best-age-to-get-pregnant
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Do you turn God away? Will you conjure an excuse and deny God’s prayer? Will you accept God’s terms but disregard the importance of this duty once He departs?
The devout disciple will honor God’s request by accepting the seed He’s given them. Through water and tending, the kernel will grow mightier than the neighboring weeds and become like a towering sunflower in a field, peering over its counterparts. With tedious care, the sunflower reaches its apex and is reaped into His kingdom fulfilling God’s will. So why do you continue to turn away God’s orphan? Did not God give you your own life to administer? Do you not comprehend that your soul knows not from whence it came nor where it may go? Were you not an orphaned spirit? Has not God given you a body and mind to nourish and to teach right from wrong? God gave you the responsibility to look after this body, so why do you fight His will by succumbing to unhealthy practices? Why do you not indulge in self-care? Why do you recite curses and condemn the gift that God has provided you? Why do you purposefully harm the vessel that transports the only soul you have ever truly known? Are you not spitting in the face of God by neglecting His child? Your orphaned soul was granted a life by God. Therefore, do not pity the body nor the mind that has been given to you. Do not subject yourself to pain nor neglect. Nourish yourself mentally and physically. Seek to learn right from wrong through blessings and error. God will lead you to the peak of your potential. By choosing to nurture the body and mind delivered to you, you are fulfilling God’s will; but by carelessly conditioning the body and mind to negligence, you are opposing God’s will and your struggle will continue.
Windows are a precise allegory to the human body. The body signifies a barrier separating the controllable interior of the mind and soul to the uncontrollable exterior of the outside world. With gestures of thought and meditation, the mind contemplates, rekindles lost experiences, spawns ideas and fantasies, and formulates dreams and visions; these acts partially dictated by your conscience and partially dictated by your soul. But gaze through your eyes and name me a man who bears the strings of another’s will.
What does this mean? I can manufacture conclusions but cannot conclude for somebody else, for they are under their own jurisdiction and not mine. Therefore, the opinions of others will not cause my mind to anguish as I never could control their thoughts in the first place. I was given this body and not theirs, so why should I weep over a thought not of my own? If another wrongfully casts judgement upon you, do not give in to sorrow. Let them carry the burden of a hateful creature, for their maliciousness or ignorance reflects their struggle. Instead: process, learn, grow, and do not let the uncontrollable influence what you can control. It is within my power to end my own anguish because my anguish is my own. It is within my power to seek to end the anguish of others; but I can only act as far as I am able, for their anguish is not my own. Any attempt to end the anguish of others outside of the possible realm will be an act against the will of God and the universe He administrates. I can never best such a formidable opponent, therefore I shall not seek to manipulate what I cannot control. Windows are a stern gateway; they permit the sunshine to enter but never the rain. Therefore, let your body be as a window: do not let the outside storm influence your mind and soul, but welcome the sunshine so that your perspective of life never succumbs to rust. |
Waylon O'DonnellBearing experience in MLA, APA, and AP formats, O'Donnell is an adept wordsmith with plentiful publications. Archives
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