The long view doesn’t have to lead you to nihilism.  It can also lead you to gratitude, to the understanding that your individual existence is the result of a near-impossible, billions of years, winning streak. Consider: Every woman has seven million eggs. Every ejaculation 100 million sperm.  You had to win two lotteries to be born. Your two parents had to win four lotteries and your four grandparents eight lotteries and so on, going back 100,000 years. And then millions of years of hominids, and millions more of apes, and billions of years of whatever life forms we were before that. And that’s just to be conceived.  All our ancestors had to make it to birth, and then avoid all the perils of life– predators, …