Figured I'd post this here as a submission as well as the journal entry I made. I just really like what I wrote here.

I was watching a commercial on TV the other day for a website that searches for your genealogy. The lady in the advert mentioned that in using the site, she discovered that her great-great grandmother had given birth to five children, with only one of those five surviving. She remarked, “It's easy to forget just how lucky you are.” This notion got me thinking—she is certainly correct, but moreso than the commercial itself proved. Consider the following statistics, and let it all sink in about how marvelous it truly is that you yourself are alive to read this:

The known universe is approximately 13.75 billion years old, with a diameter of about 93 billion light-years (and still expanding). Our universe is home to anywhere from about 100 billion to 500 billion galaxies, based on estimates from current data.

Each galaxy can have anywhere from 10 million to 100 trillion stars. Our Milky Way galaxy alone has roughly 200 billion stars.

It is estimated that anywhere from 10% to 25% of stars have planets that revolve around them. Here in the Milky Way, approximately 15% of all stars here have solar systems like ours. That's about 30 billion solar systems here in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

In addition to the 8 planets in our own solar system, we have discovered 564 other planets (extra-solar planets) to date. These extra-solar planets are typically gas giants like Jupiter, so we have not truly discovered any other planets like Earth that could sustain life. However, analysis of the 100+ planet systems of distant stars shows that about half COULD have a planet like Earth that has been around long enough for life to potentially begin.

Our Earth is approximately 4.55 billion years old. Life did not spring up until only about 2 billion years ago, meaning the Earth went for over 2.5 billion years with no life—just absolutely barren.

Estimates for life on Earth give anywhere from 5 billion to 50 billion species that have ever existed total. That's 5,000,000,000 to 50,000,000,000 species OTHER than humans that have come. For an idea of timeline: “Land plants did not appear until about 430 million years ago; reptiles, 300 million years ago; and modern mammals, 75 million years ago. The first apes appeared about 35 million years ago, and the first apelike men, about 10 million years ago. Man, himself, has been on earth for only about 300,000 years.” (Direct quote from http://www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.co.....-life-on-earth )

It is suggested that extinction events (events that cause a drastic increase in the extinction of many species currently on the planet, resulting in a dramatic decrease in special diversity) typically occur once every 26 million to 30 million years. Not counting the allegations that we humans are creating one now with over-consumption of resources, we are allegedly due for another extinction event in approximately 10 million years. However, the last MAJOR extinction event occurred about 65 million years ago.

There are a variety of different hypothesized causes for extinction events to occur, including: flood basalt events; sea-level falls; impact events (such as a giant meteor colliding with Earth); sustained and sufficient global warming or cooling; major methane eruptions (a.k.a. “clathrate gun hypothesis”); anoxic events (causing a sever deficiency in the oxygen levels of the oceans); hydrogen sulfide emissions from the seas; oceanic overturn (in which anoxic deep ocean waters rise to the surface, killing oxygen-breathing organisms); a nearby nova, supernova, or gamma ray burst; and major shifts in plate tectonics.

Now, considering so far all the workings of the universe and our own planet against our chances to survive and perpetuate, consider what kinds and how many times your own lineage has been subject to maladies, plagues, or other misfortunes. It could be like the example I quoted from the TV advert; or it could be something like financial downfall; genocide, slavery, or any other form of controlling your family's own perpetuation by another culture; mass plague (such as the Bubonic Plague of the Middle Ages). Consider this own unique parameter to the overall chances of you coming into being.

To be born, you had to come from a human male sperm fertilizing a human female egg. If this is not the case, then you are even MORE special for being able to read this, and I don't know how to further calculate your probability of existence. For the rest of us, that one sperm came from an ejaculation that, factors such as stress or age or the like aside, averages about 280 million sperm. That means that there was likely a chance that the you that exists today could have been narrowed down to 1 in 280,000,000—or thereabouts. That's just from your dad.

To be reading this, you had to have learned how to read first. You probably started that part of your education somewhere between the ages of 5 and 7. This means you're lucky to have survived even past the age of 5. The child mortality rate (that is, the percent of children that die under the age of 5) was recorded as 6% for a world average in 2009. That was about 8,100,000 children in that year alone.

You're also fortunate to have the education and cognitive ability to be literate enough to read this. You could have been one of the 28% of the adult world that remains illiterate.

And of course, unless someone else printed this off for you, you're reading this online, which means that you are one of the 2 billion people able to use the Internet—only 30.2% of the world's total population.

One last thing: With disregard to any speculations of the afterlife, you are alive to be reading this, meaning that not only have you beat the child mortality odds, but you've (so far) beaten the odds of any other prominent cause of death, which include:
-Hunger/Malnutrition – 58% of all deaths
-Cardiovascular diseases – 29.34%
-Infectious and parasitic diseases – 23.04%
-Ischemic heart disease – 12.64%
-Malignant neoplasms (cancers) – 12.49%
-Cerebrovascular disease (Stroke) – 9.66%
-Respiratory infections – 6.95%
-Lower respiratory tract infections – 6.81%
-Respiratory diseases – 6.49%
-Unintentional injuries – 6.23%
-HIV/AIDS – 4.87%
-Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – 4.82%
-Perinatal conditions – 4.32%
-Digestive diseases – 3.45%
-Diarrhea diseases – 3.15%
-Intentional injuries (suicide, violence, war, etc.) – 2.84%
-Tuberculosis – 2.75%
-Malaria – 2.23%
-Lung cancers – 2.18%
-Road traffic accidents – 2.09%

So there it is. We've beat the odds of the universe—we're on one of the few habitable planets around one of trillions of stars in existence, having developed after billions of other species, between extinction events on our planet. You yourself have had a long lineage to consider, likely with many hardships thrown in here and there. That one sperm of the scores of millions provided by your biological father made it into that healthy egg of your biological mother, and you grew up enough to read, have access to the Internet, and you haven't died yet. Yes, I think you and I are both VERY lucky to be here. Being alive is AWESOME!

Sources:
universetoday.com
en.wikipedia.org
answers.com
answers.yahoo.com
http://world.bymap.org/LiteracyRates.html
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
http://www2.oakland.edu/biology/lin.....spermfacts.htm
http://www.armageddononline.org/ext.....tion_event.php
http://www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.co.....-life-on-earth
http://exoplanet.eu/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/release.....0105161540.htm