If we keep going with the show metaphor, most shows - plays, movies, concerts - are around three hours long, so let's go with that. 3*60*60 = 10,800 seconds, which we can again round to 10,000.

That means in all the time that's already happened, you get to see one ten thousandth of a second of the show.

But, okay, what if the greatest show is just a hominid thing? Hominids have been around for roughly four million years, and all the neat stuff like tool-making has been around for two million years and change. So, rounding that down to just one million years, if you live for a century, you'll have experienced one ten thousandth of the show. Or, in our three hour metaphor, you'll have experienced roughly one second.

You have just enough time to experience a burst of light and sound and the realization that Things Are Happening in that tiny, infinitesimal glimpse into the show, and then it's just... gone. And so are you, with all the knowledge and memory and love you've gained, because it may have been a second to the world, but it was everything to you. This is what haunts me late at night - that we all exist within a single breath of the world, and that no platitude can ever really make that stop being true.

But since I've dished out some existential dread, it's only fair for me to share the bit that gets me back up and moving, too.

It's NOT okay, and it COULD be better, and if I could have a thousand or ten thousand more years, I'd take them in a heartbeat. But the thing is, as it stands, we only get one second of the show, so we might as well make it count.

Do you know how much can happen in a second? Innumerable amounts of atoms collide, and lightning flashes in the sky, and you can say "I love you," if you say it really fast. We've had to make words for things that happen in a thousandth of a second, or a millionth, or a billionth, and we've even made it down to Planck time, which is so mind-bogglingly small that my brain breaks trying to imagine it.

And we're not alone, either. If a million people shout at the same time, even for just a second, it'll be audible for miles around. It destroys me inside that it's impossible to share everything we each experience with the rest of the world, but we can still share the bits that mean the most to us, and we can still pool our seconds to do something bigger than just ourselves. The most surefire way to make our second count is to not spend it entirely alone, and if that's all we get, then let's try to make it worth something.

Sinosauropterix collage!

I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right?

But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize,  snarkily say, “So, you’ve decided to join us”?

Or when someone does something they’ve had trouble doing, say, “Why can’t you do that all the time?” (Happened to me, too often.)

Or any sentence containing the word “finally”. 

If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don’t complain about how it’s not enough. Don’t bring up previous stuff. Encourage it.

In the US, you can use the above link. It generally covers the prescription entirely. The pharmacy just has to run it like an insurance. It's nothing new, we've been using cards like these for decades at this point, so the staff should know how to handle it.

The Evolution of Dice ! I’ve been wanting to do this one for a long time. Is it pretty understandable? Crits welcome!