How can it be that from all the generations that have come before us, you and I happen to be here? Can you imagine the good fortune which brought us to this day?
In my own family, I think of my father’s paternal side and how things could have gone so differently for my brother and me. For example, dad’s father survived in a family devastated by tuberculosis. That grandfather didn't join the military to serve in the First World War where so many Newfoundland men served and died. My grandfather had a job on the railway and didn’t enlist in the Newfoundland Regiment to fight in Europe. He followed his brothers who worked on the Newfoundland Railway.
My maternal great grandfather travelled to Newfoundland in the late 1800s. His line had survived the Irish Potato Famine. The journey to Newfoundland must have been perilous for all of my ancestral lines. Then many of them fished the North Atlantic in dories and survived to have families.
Foremothers survived all of the dangers and diseases of the time and childbirth to deliver a live baby. Many children died at birth and from disease as babies or youth but in a long long of predecessors, ours didn’t.
How many dangers did we personally survive to be here today? In my own life, there were several times my life was endangered. I almost drowned the year I finished high school, saving a friend. Another time, on the highway, my husband and I passed a transport truck. A part of the muffler of the truck flew off and slammed into the passenger side of the car where I was sitting. Luckily it hit the post between the front and back doors, at the level of my head though. The post was badly dented. This was prior to our daughter’s birth.
Generations of your forefathers and foremothers and mine survived the circumstances and conditions of their time in human history which led to us being here today. We won the lottery!
So much of what happens in our lives is serendipitous. Our existence involves serial serendipity in fact, or as some believe, we are part of a Divine plan.
Whatever you believe, enjoy every minute! Many didn't have the opportunity.