We Don't Exist As It Seems to Us We Do

I often think of the sheer randomness

of existence—if I’d gone to Tucson
instead of Minneapolis for grad
school, my daughters would not have been born. Not

a one of us would be alive if one
of our billion ancestors had failed
to procreate—a chance infinitely
slimmer than winning the lottery. The

fact that in the dead factual past we
had parents who branded us in certain
ways, and that we made decisions that took
us down certain paths does not obviate

that other interesting fact: the well-
nigh impossibility of our lives.