My friend Craig James of Cat-Strat.com (a man who lives in abundant happiness) shared his vision of personal impact with me, and I called it Happy Math. I am reprinting a portion of one of his blog posts to offer proof that you are AMAZING in your impact on the world.
Zero Chance of Living
A little story, and a little math…
(OK a lot of math):
(OK a lot of math):
- A million years ago (50,000 generations); your 50,000th-great-grandparents had your 49,999th-great grandparent via what was likely a 1 in a million chance. i.e., parental units #50,000-ago, made the right right turns (crawls?) or left turn(s)… Those turns resulted in exactly that male meeting exactly that female – or not. One of them was eaten by some animal – or not. They conceived exactly that 49,999th-great-grandparent of yours – or not.
- Assuming the above, here’s the next generation: Again, say, 1 in a million chance that parental units #49,999 met, survived and conceived exactly #49,998 great-grandparent. The two generations and their combined probabilities = 1 in a (Million X Million) chance, or 1 in a Trillion chance that your beloved great-grandparent #49,998 ever existed. And so on.
- So, before we get to YOU, we need to do about another million more years of math (i.e., do the above calculation, exponentially, another 49,997 times). The number is probably so huge that the zeros would fill the entire Universe.
- Thus, there was a 1 in a Number-as-huge-as-the-Universe chance that you should exist at all. Basically; zero-chance you should be living. But you’re here.
- Whether validated through faith or science… obviously, if we are here… we are meant to be here
More math going forward (here’s the HAPPY MATH part!):
- If you live 80 years and impact someone else in a meaningful way, just once a month, that’s a 1,000 important “life-impacts” you created throughout your life. Assuming each one of your 1,000 life-impact people maximized their own 1,000 impacts, in part, because of you… you will impact at least 1 million people in your lifetime if you’re willing to look out just 1 degree… What’s more; that’s if you positively impact someone else just 1X per month.
- The calculation above doesn’t do the go-forward multi-generational exponential math we did in the ancestral exercise. Looking generations ahead, your impact is again a number as-huge-as-the-Universe.
So – If you think your life is meaningless: Are you sure?
If you think you have some divine purpose in life: You’re probably right.