BE THE MIRACLE
How I’m Trying to Reframe My Mind
I’ve never been Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky… unless I drank enough Milwaukee’s Best Ice… but lately I’ve been trying to at least become Mr. Eh-It’s-Not-So-Bad.
The industry I usually work in, “reality” television, is slowly dying. Or more likely is already toes-curled-up dead. Talking with people, many talented and creative people are struggling. They are not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Forced into mid-life career changes they didn’t exactly plan for.
I am right there with them.
Even though I have a short editing gig starting in a couple of weeks, I’ve pretty much accepted that I too am heading toward another major life adjustment.
And strangely… I feel pretty excited about it.
Granted, one former boss once made a very keen observation about how I am the ultimate contrarian.
He pointed out how, whenever people were excited about a new season of a show we worked on, I was there to remind everyone it was mostly just stupid television. Talk about a buzzkill. And whenever everyone was discouraged about work, I was usually the first one to pop in and say, “Cheer up. It could be worse.”
For me, it did get worse.
Losing my wife to cancer was the hardest stretch of my life. Add this mid-life career pivot, and the fact that I am about to become an empty nester as my two daughters head off to college, and by most measures, I should be a complete trainwreck.
But I’m not.
I feel very optimistic about the future. I feel content. Happy, even.
Part of me wonders if this is just my contrarian wiring going into overdrive.
But I think the shift is deeper than that. I am finally starting to grasp just how unbelievably lucky I am to be alive.
And I don’t want to get all self-help, Stuart Smalley (deep dive there) guru on you… BUT SO ARE YOU.
I ran across these numbers recently, and they stopped me in my tracks.
The odds of any one of us existing are often estimated at around 1 in 400 trillion.
That is not poetic exaggeration. That is math.
At conception— if you are even in the lucky group that gets to make the journey— roughly 200 million sperm compete for the ultimate prize. Only one wins. A 1 in 200 million shot between life… or being discarded into a tissue. Or just quietly sliding down a drain.
And that is just one generation.
Now zoom out.
Two parents.
Four grandparents.
Eight great-grandparents.
Go back 30 generations, roughly 700–800 years, and more than a billion specific people had to live long enough to meet the right person at the exact right moment in order for you to exist today.
If any one of them had chosen a different partner, moved to a different town, missed a train, blown off that date for someone hotter… You would not be here.
And yet here you are. Reading words. On a glowing rectangle. Floating through space on a rock. On one of the 300 sextillion planets in the universe.
1 in 400 trillion seems pretty reasonable.
That’s how I’m trying to reframe things.
We are not just lucky. We are goddamn, statistically, off-the-charts, absurdly, lucky.
Yes, I would have loved more time with my wife. Of course, I would have. I miss her every day. However, I do believe I will see her again someday.
But for right now, I am still here.
And if being here is this unlikely, maybe I owe it to myself to see what else I can do with the time I still have left.
Maybe this career shift isn’t just an inconvenience… maybe it is an invitation.
Maybe, just maybe, I am slowly becoming Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky.
And remember…
You could have ended up in a tissue.
Or down the drain.
So Be the Miracle.