1 billion seconds

I have a hard time conceptualizing numbers.

When I hear “a billion”, I know that it’s a really big number, but I don’t understand exactly how big. Not really.

But I recently heard it in terms that helped me comprehend it:

A million seconds is 11.5 days,

But a billion seconds? A little less than 32 years.

32 years.

I’m currently 33.

I’ve been alive for over a billion seconds.

1,046,131,200 seconds—and counting—to be exact.

1,046,131,200 seconds.

1,046,131,200 seconds of experiencing the wholly unlikely miracle that it is to even just be born.

Did you know that your odds of being born are 1 in 400 trillion? A trillion seconds is 31,700 years, by the way.

But the odds that I was born, survived for 1,046,131,200 seconds, and went through my entire life in such a way that led me here, writing this?

Incalculable.

The fact that I’ve seen a blood moon during a meteor shower from the top of a mountain. A blue whale. A fox in my backyard.

That I’ve gotten caught in a blizzard in Italy, and swam with sharks in Belize.

That I’ve fallen in love.

That my heart has been broken.

That I’ve felt the cold air burn my lungs so bad I thought I might cough them up, and had legs so heavy I thought they might fall off.

That I’ve noticed the way the morning dew clings to spider webs in the early morning hours, and how the light casts shadows and prisms around my house at 6 pm in September.

That I’ve been cuddled to sleep in fresh linen sheets, and jumped into an icy waterfall pool in the middle of a forest on a hot summer day.

Impossible.

When I see I’ve been alive for over a billion seconds, my immediate impulse is to feel a dull, empty ache.

So much time, so little to show for it. I’ve hardly accomplished even a fraction of the things I thought I would by now.

But then I think about all of the life I’ve absorbed into my bones.

Everything I’ve lost. Everything I’ve learned.

All things felt and witnessed.

Every crutch, every vice, every meandering thought.

Every kiss, every dance, every breath.

It’s all important—it all matters, because it’s all far beyond the realm of possibly.

1 billion seconds are a rare gift.

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Editor’s note: I was initially going to take this week off from writing. I needed a little break and had some admin tasks to take care of (i.e., taxes). But another thing I started doing this week was funmaxxing, and it’s already been doing mysterious things to my brain. To the point that this just… came to me. I initially wasn’t going to share it—it’s a bit of a departure from the style of writing that I’ve come to be known for—but then I remembered that this was the sort of thing I used to publish, before anyone was watching. And something in the ether nudged me to publish it anyway.

If anything, I want it to be a reminder to both you and me that not everything needs to be perfect and polished, and that sometimes the best thing to do is to put things out in the world and not worry so much about how it’s going to be perceived.

See you next week

xx