Have a Nice Day

There are times when you read a book and excerpts of it seem to jump out at you from the page. You suddenly wish you had written those words. At times, they're just the words you wanted to hear for a little reassurance, at other times the author may have put down your thoughts on paper.

Some people seem to have the gift of being able to express their feelings so well on paper that you can't help but wish at some point that you had written it. Bill Bryson is the latest author who evoked this feeling in me. Lately I've been reading his book - "A Short History of Nearly Everything". It's not the kind of book I could read at a stretch unlike the other books of his that I've read, but I would still recommend any of you science enthusiasts to go out and get yourself a copy of this book. Here's an excerpt (it's the last few paragraphs of his book):

"If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here - and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life at all in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course. We enjoy not only the privilege of existence, but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a trick we have only just begun to grasp.

We have arrived at this position of eminence in a stunningly short time. Behaviourally modern humans have been around for no more than about 0.0001 per cent of Earth's history - almost nothing, really - but even existing for that little while has required a nearly endless string of good fortune.

We really are at the beginning of it all. The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end. And that, almost certainly, will require a lot more than lucky breaks."

Three cheers to that...