If you do not consider yourself
a testament to the impossible
let me help you understand:
you are an assortment of atoms,
carving out its very own fate
with your stardust powered hands.

You are part of every atom in the world, and every atom is part of you.

Arranging atoms in certain ways appears to bring about an experience of being that very collection of atoms. This is undoubtedly one of the deepest mysteries given to us to contemplate.

Every atom of me and every atom of you.

what a perfect collision of star it was that came together at just the right moment at just the right time to build the incredible thing that is you

every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. and, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. it really is the most poetic thing i know about physics: you are all stardust.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. Information distilled over 4 billion years of biological evolution. Incidentally, all the organisms on the Earth are made essentially of that stuff. An eyedropper full of that liquid could be used to make a caterpillar or a petunia if only we knew how to put the components together.

This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms-folded them into its genes-and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady.

The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded, and the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded because the elements—the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution—weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get... into your body is if these stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.

This that we are now created the body, cell by cell, like bees building a honeycomb. The human body and the universe grew from this, not this from the universe and the human body.

It had taken a couple of billion years to produce me. In that couple of billion years, I had millions upon millions of ancestors. Slime-like ancestors, jelly-like ancestors, water-breathing ancestors, air-breathing ancestors, ancestors that floated, that swam, that crawled, that ran, that climbed, that finally walked. And all of those ancestors, no matter how different, had one thing in common.
They had survived long enough to have descendants. Other species didn’t and their lines were extinct, bare bones in rock strata. But no matter how scarce food got, no matter what enemies they faced, what unprecedented natural upheavals they had to adjust to, my ancestors somehow managed to pull through, and have offspring. That’s how I happen to be here.

If you would create something,
you must be something.

You have been created from the blood of incalculable planets and immense supernovas and infinite constellations. And they didn’t spend years painting your soul into masterpiece-like existence for you to waste it on someone who doesn’t appreciate you.

Because they are so long-lived, atoms really get around. Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms — up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested — probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name. (The personages have to be historical, apparently, as it takes the atoms some decades to become thoroughly redistributed; however much you may wish it, you are not yet one with Elvis Presley.) So we are all reincarnations — though short-lived ones. When we die our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere — as part of a leaf or other human being or drop of dew. Atoms, however, go on practically forever.