its been a while hasnt it? i guess i havent had any majorly significant thoughts of late... ^^;
i once wrote about the humble appleseed, and equated it to the unique miracle of human life, that from a tiny single cell comes this complex, living, breathing, thinking orgasnism. which is pretty amazing in and of itself.
However, last night i was watching a documentry on tv called "The Great Sperm Race" which essentially scaled up the whole process of sexual conception up to human size. it was kinda funny, and at the same time very informative and quite astounding... i have a whole new level of respect and awe for sperm (particularly the one that succeeded in making me.)
basically, from the moment a sperm is created, the whole world, quite literally, is against it. For starters, only a healthy sperm stands any chance of making it to the egg. apparently over 70% of a mans sperm is unhealthy. (deformed or erratic). also, timing is a pretty big thing too. so you need a healthy sperm in the right place at the right time.
A man makes sperm pretty much his whole life, so out of the trillions and trillions of sperm created, the one that made you needed to be in the right place at the right time.
if a sperm manages to make it into a female body, thats when the odds really start stacking. first of it has to navigate the vagina, which appaerntly resembles a valley in the mountainous regions of europe, only much much more hostile. here, approximately 80% of the millions of sperm that enter the female will die, thanks to the female immune system trying to erradicate the invading foreign cells.
should the sperm manage to navigate the vagina, it needs to get into the cervix. this can only happen when a female is mensturating, so again, its a case of being in the right place at the right time. if the sperm is lucky, it will then have to climb up into the cervix, which in the tv program equated to climbing a ladder into the sky about a mile long.
once at the top, the sperm then has to navigate the fornix, which is essentially a death trap for sperm...it consists of millions of tiny tunnels barely wide enough for a sperm to fit, and 99.99999% of them are dead ends, which asically means the sperm gets lost and dies.
should the sperm manage to find the right exit (remembering this is still fighting against gravity and the female immune system) it will enter the uterus, which is equated to a great wide open plain, millions of miles wide. and the sperm is trying to find an exit that is literally about two sperm heads wide. for the sperm, it is literally like trying to find a needle in the worlds biggest haystack. not only that, but the uterus deploys deadly cells that are trying to hunt and down and kill any invading cells in the uterus...and that includes sperm. and, to make matters worse, only sperm displaying certain characteristics will be allowed into the fallopian tubes...its by invitation only.
so crossing the uterus for a sperm is like trying to find the entrance to the best nightclub ever, but the entrance is the size of a manhole cover in the middle of a city the size of london, new york, sydney, los angeles and hong kong COMBINED and will only let certain people in. and you have to find this entrance before the combined rugby squads of the world hunt you down and crush you. if you were a sperm, you'd be pegging it across the landscape thinking "sh*t sh*t sh*t!!!!! oh man! they got dave!! SH*T SH*T SH*T SH*T!!!"
Fortunatly, if you are one of the handful (approx 20) sperm that have made it this far, the fallopian tubes are a well deserved pit stop before the final push. the sperm are nourished and protected.
when the egg gets released, it sends out a signal, which marks the start of the final leg. All the sperm shake off their protective sheaths, which gives them a burst of energy, but also means they've sealed their fate. once the sheaths are off, they have a limited amount of time before the sperm expires...they are literally racing against the clock.
once again it all comes down to timing. If the sperm arrives too early, the egg wont be there, and the sperm runs out of time and dies. get there too late, and some other sperm has already won. you have to be the right sperm in the right place at the right time. by this time, the couple of million sperm we started off with has now dwindled down to a couple of sperm. once those last few sperm reach the egg, its literally a race to the wire to whoever can implant their genetic code first. the winning sperm will smash its head into the egg, and be anniahlated as the two sets of chrmosomes combine and the egg begins to devide.
so thats basically what happens. but here's the bit really worth thinking about...
a woman is born with all the eggs she will ever produce in a life time. the source is finite, and once they are all gone, thats it. no more. so in that respect, the parts of you that you recieved from your mother was always there. its always existed.
on the other hand, a man, as stated earlier, produces trillions of sperm within his life time. so the parts of you that you recieved from your father, including your gender, is only around for a brief period of time.
so you, as you are today, are composed of 45% luck, 45% timing, and 10% being the right sperm out of trillions. and that right sperm not only had to be fast enough, strong enough, smart enough; it also had to face one of the world's dealiest gauntlets, a proverbial trial by hellfire, just to sacrifice itself in order to get you going.
those are some incredibly biblical odds. all that you are, in all your physical, mental, genetic glory, is all thanks to that one particualr sperm surviving to meet that one particular egg at exactly the right instant in all of time itself.
and thats what makes each and every life unique, precious, special, something to be treasured more than anything else in creation. you, quite literally, are a miracle.
