Life is Precious, even mathematically..

                Last week, an IIM-B student named Malini Murmu, committed suicide. Reason : Her boyfriend dumped her on Facebook. His status read “Feeling Super Cool today. Dumped my new ex-girlfriend. Happy Independence day !”. I agree that this status, might have hurt her badly. But that is no reason, for taking her own life. I’m not going to say this is right or wrong. Let us not rally on that. My point is something else, something much more important…., Life…, precisely.

Waste of Talent and Hope !!!

                Few months from now, she might have got herself a big job which paid her obscenely (imagine, an IIM-B graduate), get lucky and get loved again and much more. All this, had she lived. But, Alas, that stupid girl decided to pull her plug. Ironically, Suicide is the most cowardly act, which requires immense courage.

                Let us do a simple math, to find out how precious Life is. Let Mr.X be a fictional human being, living a healthy life, on earth. We’ll find out the probability for the same, I mean, for ‘a human being living a healthy life, on earth’. (Forgive me if this post is lengthy, but I have to get the math right, to prove it)

   1)      It is a scientific fact that a single human male ejaculation, during copulation, releases 180 million sperms. So Mr.X is that one little lucky sperm in 180 million. For math’s sake, let us keep it 100 million. So, one in hundred million, as of now.

   2)      Don’t we need an egg for an embryo to develop?  Yes. A human female develops 522 eggs in her life time. It is lucky that Mr.X’s parents decided to do it on that particular month. If they had decided to do it on some other month, it might have been Mr.Y or Ms.Z alive, not Mr.X. So now the probability of Mr.X being  alive is one in fifty billion.

   3)      Now this is the probability of Mr.X being born to his parents. What about his parents?  His dad being his paternal grandparents’ son and his mom being his maternal grandparents’ daughter? That’s a pair of one in 50 billion resulting in another one in 50 billion. I don’t even know how to calculate probability for it. So as of now, for simplicity, let us take one in 500 billion as the probability of Mr.X being born(which is much greater than the real probability)

   4)      This is just for a single generation. Even if we consider that human race started from 0 BC/AD, we have to count for 20 generations.  So you repeatedly divide, one in 500 billion, by 500 billion, for 20 times. That is definitely beyond the processing power of my brain. Let us scale it down again. Say, one in hundred trillion – the probability of Mr.X’s birth.

   5)      Now probability( I know you hate it at this moment) of human being formed?? There are billions and billions of species. If not for our brain, we might very well be extinct by this time. So,the probability of Mr.X being a human being(keep in mind that dinosaurs were ruling the earth a long time ago, and also recently in the Jurassic park movie) is let us say one in one quintillion.

   6)      Ok, just simple math from now on, the probability of earth being formed – hmmmm, I don’t know. But, after taking into consideration some amount for this event, let us say , as of now , the probability of Mr.X being born on earth is one in a googol (yes, I spelled it correctly, it was Mr.Brin who spelled it wrong).

   7)      Well, my last point and the most important one. Life.. Our scientists have discovered thousands of planets and stars, but none of them even have the slightest hint of life. If there is head and tail, you can calculate the probability, if head is the only thing, then I don’t know how to, it is beyond math. Life is something weird., even science can’t explain it and it exists only here.  There are infinite amount of heavenly bodies and so I have to say, the probability is one in infinity.

                So, at last, the probability of ‘Mr.X living a healthy life, on earth’ is one in infinity. If it is one in infinity for Mr.X, then it is so for you, and for me. If I am right, one by infinity is zero. So mathematically, you and me, should not exist at all, but fortunately, we do. We are here, against all odds. If Mr.X’s grandpa decided to pull his plug, just like, Shalini did, then Mr.X wouldn’t be alive and kicking, in fact neither his dad. If his mom and dad, had decided to take their lives, when Mr.X was two years old, he might very well be dead by this time, due to lack of care. My point is, your Life, though yours, belongs to others too. So it is not for you to decide, to commit suicide.

                You might be a Gollum, going madly for the Lord of the Rings, saying “My own.. My Precious”. But at some point, you have to stop, to think that the ring is not as precious as the life, that seeks it, is.

                According to Dumbledore, “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure”. Yes, true, but it should seek you, not the other way around. We might be ugly, bad, rotten to the core, depressed, broken and thousand other things. We might even be bankrupt, but always remember that we have got the most precious thing that infinite others couldn’t get- Our LIFE. Don’t lose it for anything, less precious than that.

You have given some minutes of your life to me, for reading this post. I should really thank you because, I(hopefully you, too) know how precious your life is and every minute in it, is. Thank you, again.