What Are The Chances?

What Are The Chances?

What are the chances of you being here today?

What are the odds against you ever being born?

It’s not easy seeing, how you might have come into being

The statistics are staggering, the numbers mind-boggling

So let’s check there’s no deception regarding your conception

Let’s not be defective, but get some perspective

 

The first obstacle to your birth, is the pre-existence of Earth

Which pre-supposes the creation of the whole Universe,

The evolution of its galaxies and solar systems and all of that gang

The planets and even life on this world – all the way back to The Big Bang

The conditions had to be right, there had to be sun-light

So that single-celled organisms might, and primeval life able to fight

Its way out of the primordial soup -  indeed out of that gloop

Came all forms of life as we know it

Natural selection of life, in years measured over four billions

And humanoids spanned out in the merest two millions

 

And every one of your ancestors had to last until reproductive age

For a hundred and fifty thousand generations in an unbroken lineage

And if each one had not happened in the right combination

Each person would have been a different creation

And so on, and so on, back to beginning of time, so count yourself lucky

If you want to know how it’s done

The odds are 400 trillion to one

That’s four times ten to the power of fourteen, that you might never have been

Which makes the odds on football pools, the lottery and bingo look exceedingly keen

So just a single slip, a connection that didn’t quite meet

And you’d have possibly been your own sibling or cousin, which is quite sweet

Although you never really liked them, which is quite neat

 

The next part of this string, is the whole boy meets girl thing,

And the possibility of your specific parents meeting at all

The chances of talking to each other, dating and mating

The relationship developing, having a ball

And having sex with a suitable exchange of…. bodily fluids…

 

Did you know - a fertile female has a hundred thousand eggs

And a fertile man produces twelve trillion sperm

Over their respective lifetimes….that’s quite a long term

And whilst those are figures are relatively firm,

He’d have had to have been very firm (don’t squirm)….on the nights they made love

Including Saturday nights, after the pub,

For her to get in the club…

 

Now into the workings of reproduction we’ll peek

For each egg and each sperm is genetically unique

And you are the result of the fusion of one egg with one sperm

One exact unique meeting and fertilisation coming to term

And so was each of your parents, and each of their parents -

That’s your grandparents - going all the way back into history

It’s therein, that lies all of the mystery…

 

Now if only one of these combinations had been different you see

Or not happened, you wouldn’t be here listening to me!

The chances against you existing are greater than the number of particles in the universe

Which is a very, VERY big number, and what is much worse,

Thinking about it could make your head explode, which would be even worse

The mathematical pinnacle of a sequence

The frequence of which is almost infinitesimally small

It’s nothing short of a wonder that you’ve made it here at all…

 

So the chances are basically infinite… or maybe they’re zero

Which may mean that none of us ought to exist, and here is the gist…

Perhaps we’re figments of our own fertile imaginations

Just pigments in paint, a permutation that’s faint

But, either way, it’s almost a miracle

So you are something special, or even a hero

And it means you’re unique, almost a zero

You’re an “only”… doesn’t that make you feel lonely?

Except for doppelgangers of course

And triplets and twins…but I’m not going there

In case it does all of our heads in…

 

So what are the chances, what are the odds?

So many forks in the road never taken

Let’s hope that you’re suitably shaken

So many alternative paths

Well – you do the maths!

 

On the other hand – and here is the fun -

The fact that you’re here shows we’re virtually done

The probability of your existence is actually one hundred percent

Which in mathematical terms… is equal to one

 

 Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2021