A Cellular Universe Paradox
- Admin
- Jul 17, 2017
- 2 min read

Have you ever felt insignificant to the world, the universe? (I don't blame you.) There are roughly 7 billion people on our planet, not to mention the trillion trillion other living organisms - that's a lot of problems. They say the universe is 13.6 billion years old and 46 billion light years across. Just to put it into perspective, the universe is so big, light hasn't even had enough time to cross a third of it's entirety. (Feeling insignificant yet?) Within this universe, there are roughly 10 trillion galaxies each with some estimated 100 billion stars (not counting planets). Let us imagine, that some how, somewhere in all this galactic primordial soup, life was able to evolve on just one other planet. Let's be conservative, and imagine only 1 billion other sentient beings are currently experiencing reality with equal cognitive skills to our own here on earth. That would make for a whole lot more problems. (How about now?) Well, if you're anything like me, those numbers are so incomprehensibly massive, they mean absolutely nothing to you. But they sure as hell make anything you do, no matter how great an achievement, sound absolutely obsolete. Let's scale it down a whole lot. In the universe you call your body, there are roughly 37.2 trillion cells at any given point, that's a whole lot of cells throughout your whole life - a span of time which at a healthy 80 year average, in the grand scheme of time, is not even a fart in the wind. You've got a whole lot of cells in your body all the same, and each could come with it's own grocery list of problems. Probably insignificant, right? (Wrong.) As I've come to learn, out of all those cells, you almost certainly have a good number with mutant proteins from DNA damage. It's cool though, you also almost certainly have a powerful protein called P-53 that stops these cells dead in their tracks from having a ball. I don't - have a ball or that protein. In my case, these cells run rampant in my body and unless I undergo a treatment that'll likely walk me to the heavenly gates and back, it doesn't look like I've got much of a chance to read back on this post some 5 years from now. My life hangs by a thread on the hands of a few microscopic cells. If I do nothing, they win. Despite the fact that they're as small to me as I am to the Milky Way. My confusion is in trying to understand how one can feel so insignificant, in a universe so massive, when a single cell can cost me my life. I can only deduce that it is impossible to be insignificant. There is meaning in everything. To be, is to embody meaning. The next time you find yourself feeling insignificant, look within, you are a universe hosting trillions of organisms with a clear purpose, regardless of whether or not they are aware of it, or whether you think they're good or bad. What you do matters, even if you do nothing at all. So, which are you in this universe? A cancer cell, or a P-53 protein?
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