(15, CA, USA) Anonymous - The Beauty of Existence

How is it possible that I, a 15-year-old girl, am alive, breathing, with billions of neurons, cells, and multiple organs functioning? How are there 8 billion other people, and trillions of animals, plants, and fungi almost the same? I am meant to live on this Earth for about 80 years. Imagine the horizons I will see, the stories I will tell, the people I will meet. The crazy life experiences I will share with my children, if I have any. This is the beauty of existence; we will experience so much—laughter, pain, happiness, emptiness. It doesn’t define us. There have been 100 billion who have ever lived—100 billion stories to tell, 100 billion lives that have graced our Earth. I wonder how much sadness was exchanged, how many hugs there were, how many didn't survive past their first day, and how many survived to a century. We are all so different, special, and beautiful. Some of us have brown hair, and others have none. Some of us have birthmarks, and some have vitiligo. The powerful range and diversity within the human species are remarkable. We fought against the odds to survive as a cell, and we lived our lives as best as we could. We fought against time to experience what it was like to be human. Yet, there isn’t a true purpose as to why we’re here. We are four-limbed, intelligent primates who live alone on a floating rock of oxygen and water. And that is why I find our existence beautiful. We have no reason to be here, yet we have every possible way to make our meaningless existence meaningful.