SuperLife

by our actions, we determine our fate. Health or sickness? Joy or misery? Pain or pleasure? Life or death? Largely up to us.

But before I explain why, I want to tell you about when I saw the comedian Louis CK on one of the late-night talk shows.

He’d just been on a plane, he said, when the attendant announced that Wi-Fi service was now available. The guy sitting next to him immediately began working away on his laptop, but after a few minutes the Wi-Fi suddenly went off.

“This is bullshit!” the guy said angrily.

Louis CK said he immediately thought, here we are sitting in chairs that fly through the air at five hundred miles an hour, and this guy is pissed because he can’t read his e-mail?

That’s funny and brilliant because it’s so true—about all of us. We become so accustomed to the miracles that surround us every day, we don’t even notice them.

I’m talking about your body. My body, too. Everybody’s body.

It’s a freaking miracle. Not just one miracle, either—it’s an infinite number of freaking miracles.

It’s so mind-boggling that we can hardly begin to grasp it all. If we really had to stop and think about every amazing, breathtaking, jaw-dropping thing that our bodies are constantly doing, completely on their own and without any conscious effort on our part, without us even knowing about it, we wouldn’t have time to do anything else. We’d be too dazzled to try.

Turning water into wine is a miracle, no doubt. But is it more miraculous than turning broccoli, walnuts, beets, apples, and water into bones and organs and blood and brains? Not to me.