Who can guess where you’ll be in ten million years?
I was driving today, and I realized that my ability to be driving on the road at that very moment, was entirely dependent on the death of hundreds of thousands of dinosaurs, tens of millions of years ago. Of course, without dinosaur carcasses and tremendous amounts of organic matter, dying, being buried by sediment and compressed over the course of millions of years, then petroleum deposits would not have formed.
I drove past a church bearing a cross, and though that Jesus knew the sacrifice he was making on the cross, he knew what the reason and outcome would be. Did those dinosaurs know they would end up in my engine cylinders all these years later?
In their lasts, perhaps agonizing breath, did they look up and wonder, why me, why do I need to die in this way? There is no way they could have every surmised that the outcome of this “sacrifice” would be to ensure I get home from work on a Tuesday afternoon. Gosh, it would be an ordeal to have to walk to work every day. I was filled with gratitude for all these dinosaur deaths, their bodily sacrifice, laid down so I can have the ease and convenience of filling up at a gas station.
My gratitude began to spread, to the financiers who had built the gas station, ensuring I have convenient access to this precious petroleum bone broth before I could run out. Then it continued, onto the truck drivers who deliver the fuel, the refineries, the people who built the refineries, the people who financed the refineries when they bought stocks in the energy companies, the engineers and roughnecks who are out, God knows where, coercing this ancient fluid out of the earths crust. It didn’t stop there, the people at the work camp who grate the cheese that goes on the pasta they serve to these workers. Without any of these aspects, I don’t get to drive home from work, I would have to walk.
In every moment of every day, every interaction, we are interacting thanks to the effort of millions of people, thanks to the accumulation of all scientific knowledge across time. If we really look deeply, the moment in front of us can only be here in dependence upon all of time. The formation of the earth, the tectonic plates forming continents, the makeup of the atmosphere, the evolution of man up until the point that humanity is capable of building road networks. Each of these details takes on crucial importance to getting to today. Without supernovae exploding and hurling freshly formed iron atoms deep into space, our earths core doesn’t form. Without any one of these links in the chain of cause and effect since the beginning of time, since the big bang, then I don’t get to be here driving home from work, and you don’t get to be here reading this post.
Without getting religious, this is what the bible means when it says “This is the day the Lord hath made” We can substitute “The universe” “The four fundamental forces” “Bramha” or whatever you define as being responsible for all this around us and still extract the same significance. The moment we are presented with is seriously special. It has the weight of all of time behind it, and it will later go on to become an inextricable building block of some far unknown, distant future.
What is the purpose that the world has for you in 10 million years? Will you be jet fuel in a rocket ship meant for space? Maybe a long extinct fossil on display at a small town museum. You could end up as the mote of dust, ten billion years from now, floating through space, whose gravitation becomes the nucleus for the formation of a new planet, on which a new intergalactic space fairing civilization evolves from.
Far fetched? As far fetched as it would sound to a dinosaur if you told them that they would be combusted in my 3.7 Liter Ford engine so that I can spend the day in online meetings? My suggestions seem reasonable in the face of that ridiculous statement!
So next time you are driving, say thank you to the dinosaurs, and appreciate that being able to propel yourself down whatever busy stretch of road you are on is not only a gift, but a veritable miracle unfolding right in front of you.