We Are the Latest in a Long, Unbroken Line of Survivors

When I was very young, I found a caterpillar crawling across a storm drainage grate. I felt sorry for the caterpillar, and tried to pick it up with a twig and move it to safety. But all those lumbering caterpillar legs had trouble with the wrought iron and simply fell through the grate and into the water, twirling and descending slowly and finally disappearing.

I was crushed; I can still feel the emptiness in my stomach as I watched that caterpillar sink, knowing that something soon to be so beautiful was forever lost.

As an adult, I can think of a number of ways this may have ended differently:

1) If the caterpillar had lived, he may have been eaten by a bird, and then would have become the stuff of more birds, just as he himself was the stuff of flower nectar consumed by his mother.

2) Had he lived, he may have been the progenitor of millions of butterflies after him, each carrying his DNA to a new generation.

3) Lived or died, he had uncounted (and uncountable) lives to live (or not to live) among the many multiverses inhabited by caterpillars and little boys.

As Richard Dawkins observes in River Out of Eden➚, we are the latest in a long, unbroken line of survivors. Without exception, our ancestors were all strong enough and smart enough and healthy enough to identify danger, avoid predators, fend off disease, collect food, procreate and protect, etc. If any one of them had not been, you or I would not be here.