Dayenu!

It would have been enough.

Lying awake at night, trying to get to sleep, and all I can think about is my own life and the things I think I should have accomplished. I think about my past mistakes and how things could be different if I hadn’t made them. I think about my possible futures and all I’m striving for. Consumed with what was and what will be, I forget to focus on what is.

I grew up in a Jewish family and every Passover, we would say a poem about the gratefulness of the Jews after fleeing from slavery in Egypt. The poem talked about how God provided for them but took a broader approach than just saying thanks for the freedom.

Excuse the paraphrasing:

“If God had only created the Earth but not filled it with life, it would have been enough…
If God had only created us but not set us free, it would have been enough…
If God had only split the sea but not let us cross on dry land, it would have been enough…
If God had only given us the Torah but not wise teachers, it would have been enough…”

The poem reads like a call and response. Dayenu is the Hebrew word for “it would have been enough.”

The newly liberated Jews of the Bible couldn’t help but call out their many blessings. Each line of the poem is another thing for which they want to give thanks and the response, dayenu, gives us a reminder of how great each individual blessing was. To say any one of them “would have been enough” is to admit that you are completely blown away with the fact that the blessings kept coming.

Everything in this world has come to be this way because of a bajillion different circumstances and all of those random events running into each other and causing more random events! A completely random event that leads to something good can be called a “blessing.” Meaning we all exist because of a bunch of blessings, depending on how you look at it.

Your existence is not a simple thing. You exist because of a combination of tons and tons and tons of things that all had to happen so that the other things could happen after that. The circumstances that allow you and I to exist are amazing and wonderful and mind-blowingly incredible; in other words, they’re pretty cool.

In the grand scheme of things….

It’s pretty cool that stars exist. We have exact rules for how they came to be and it’s pretty cool that we can predict exactly what they’re made of and what they’ll do next. Knowing what something will do next lets us know all that they’ve done before we started looking at them. In other words, we discovered how to look into the past.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that a side effect of stars existing is making planets. We happen to live on one of those! Without a star to orbit, our planet would just be another asteroid floating through space.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that little balls of rock (planets) happened to chill around larger balls of energy (stars), and we know why (gravity)! It’s allowed us confidently launch satellites into our own orbit so you can communicate with people all over the globe.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that our planet happened to get water at some point. We don’t even know how it happened which makes the fact we that we have water even more cool! Oceans of water means interesting stuff can start happening. Before that it was just mountains moving very, very, very slowly.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that life exists at all. At the end of the day, who really cares how it started, it did! The term “life as we know it” refers to us, but there is a chance that there are other types of “life” that exist in the universe! We get to be a part of something incredibly rare just by being alive!

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that, when faced with total annihilation, early cells were able to work together to survive. This paved the way for multicellular life. Think about that. Our ancestors could finally become something more interesting than a blob with some hairs on it. They could divide up into groups and perform different functions like a giant machine. They could grow bigger and diversify quicker than ever before.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that some of the survivors were able to diversify and cover the entire planet. The constant competition between predator and prey yielded hardy and well adapted life forms. Different types of life even adapted to work together, like plants spreading their seeds by offering them to animals as food.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that our ancestors were able to survive extinction event after extinction event. These are Mass Extinctions that we survived. You might not be picturing it correctly: Mass. Extinctions. One of them caused the air to turn to acid and suffocated most of the land animals. Bad stuff; but we made it through!

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that our ancestors were able to learn and change their environment to work for them by creating tools and shelters. Our direct ancestors weren’t born with sharp claws or rough hide but they could sharpen rocks and sticks to get the job done.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that we were able to figure out how to reproduce our own food. Forget hunting and gathering, hello farming! Want a certain type of leaf or fruit? Plant it! Want a certain type of meat? Raise it! Finally, we could settle down.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that we were able to come up with a language to communicate with each other. Granted, we’re still using a bunch of different versions but at least we can translate between them. Can you imagine how simplistic conversations must have been when we we only used grunts and hand signals? Now we can talk about philosophy and art, and even our blessings.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that we were able to come up with ways to transport ourselves around to reach far off places. Using a horse gets you farther than running, and a car takes you farther than that. Water in the way? No problem, we can float across it or take to the skies.

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that we were able to discover and harness the power of electricity. First we conquered fire, then lightning, now we’re messing around with light. Did you know you shoot a laser beam from your phone to a tower to a satellite in space any time you text?

Dayenu!

It’s pretty cool that we created and linked together a massive network to allow people from all over the planet to speak and have their voice heard. We have built something grander than ourselves, and we filled it up with jokes, cats, and opinions!

Dayenu!

I haven’t even begun to mention half of the circumstances that made you the person you are today. If you really took the time to think about it, you’ll find that it’s a pretty cool story, no matter where you start.

Back in bed, trying to sleep, and I start thinking about my life and the things I should have done and the person I should become. I have to remind myself that there is no should.

To exist at all is an opportunity. Dayenu! There is no right way to do it.

This universe would still be amazing and wonderful if only a fraction of what happened actually happened; it would have been enough. The fact that it all did means we are here now, and that’s pretty cool.