Imagine space is a bathtub-no, better yet, the dead sea. A vast body of water completely devoid of life, and earth is just that freak little rubber ducky with mold on it. We are the mold.
How have we managed to survive this long? Floating through the bleak nothingness, black holes and meteors threatening to smear us across the solar system and you have NO clue as you sit back and text on the freeway. Radiation barrages us ceaselessly but it just so HAPPENS that earth's magnetic field is strong enough to hold the brunt of it at bay. Just enough that you can be satisfied by a pair of sunglasses and some sunscreen.
And although you feel like it will be FOREVER before you get out of school once it's past it will be FOREVER before you get a job, before you get married, before you die. And all of this in a space of what, eighty years?
You are SO small. That guy outside staring at you through the window is a dot on a slightly bigger dot in a sea of dots. and that sea could very well be on the back of a turtle in some universe sized aquarium. But he can't comprehend that, and neither can we. It doesn't even compute how many children are dying under the baking sun in Africa, their small worlds extinguishing before they know what their favorite color is. Before they taste ice cream. There could be an intergalactic war just one galaxy away. MILLIONS of people being torn from their families, tortured, and murdered while you complain about the zit on your forehead. WEIRD huh?
So many people throughout history have seen this and decided affecting other peoples lives are what make a man important. To be remembered is to be immortal.Others look at this and say "screw that, I'm here for me" and become a level 80 druid on World of Warcraft.
