You are lucky to even exist! Be happy!

One theme I'd like to develop in this Primal Happiness blog is the idea:

"You are lucky to even exist, so you should be happy!"

How is each of us lucky to be alive?

Some of the reasons come from the world, and the universe around it.

- We are lucky the universe came into existence.
- We are lucky that matter was able to clump together and form stars and planets.
- We are lucky that our planet was close enough to the sun for ice to melt, yet not so close that all the water boiled off into space.
- We are lucky that another planet crashed into ours, left most of its metal core behind, and then settled down enough to orbit us and become our moon.

Why is the last one such a great thing? Because the moon gives us our tides - it churns the seas and makes things happen.

What things?

Well, how did life begin? Leaving religion aside, we have the question of: how did strands of DNA become long enough, and sophisticated enough, to copy themselves? Remember, in the early days, there was no life. The earth was just a big rock with salty water sloshing around on it. (Sloshing because of the moon!)
Perhaps those tides created by the moon stirred up pools of molecules. There's a theory that crystals formed attachments to strands of proteins, which became DNA.
We don't yet know how DNA came into existence.
But we are lucky it did, as it builds all other life (along with RNA, of course).

- We are lucky that life evolved to produce multi-cellular creatures, eventually mammals, and eventually humans.
- We are lucky that around 200,000 years ago, something happened to early humans, where they became self-aware.
- We are lucky that our ancestors developed language and tools.
- We are lucky that our ancestors didn't kill each other off right away.
- We are lucky that they survived horrible conditions (life was "nasty, brutish and short") and began to spread across the earth.
- We are lucky that they developed agriculture and figured out ways to live together, without everyone fighting all the time.

These are some of my "big-picture" reasons for why each of us should be very, very happy we exist at all.

Any one of these things could have gone the other way, and none of us would exist.

So, be happy!
It's a miracle we are here at all!