The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries
ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you
are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother
Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We
are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams
come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are
not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other
microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion
molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The
total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions
at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our
body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the
universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science
would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a
host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the
stars of heaven.” - Paul Hawken