I came across an article about David Blatner's book Spectrums. He queries the age old wonderment: Which amount is greater? The number of stars or grains of sand? I, myself, have been on many beaches, from Florida, to California, to Maine (I contend some of the best beaches are on the west coast of our great state). I contemplated many times how many grains could there possibly be on the entire Earth? Blatner proposes (they did this whole scientific analysis) an equation: Sand: 7.5.x 10 to the 18th power=seven quintillion, 5 hundred guadrillion. The Hubble telescope as of 2003 estimates 70 thousand, million, million, million stars. Stars win! (Don't ask me to write out the formula, ask Ms. Parnell to do it) But here's the astonishing kicker; there are approximately the same number of H2O molecules "in just 10 drops of water" as there are stars. Just regular drops of water. Cool!
That is a huge number and scope in a very small amount, it's something we can actually wrap our brains around....ten drops of ordinary water. Even small things, tiny things can add up to big things. Someone once said, if you don't write your (unique and 'small') story it'll never be written.
I've instructed my classes, when describing a person, the modifier "very" should not be used with the adjective unique. Each and every person is someone without like or equal. That is true with an individual granular of sand or a star. Throughout the bigness of the universe in all of its tiniest of forms, even one is part of that beautiful collective whole. When I doubt whether my book, amongst the hundreds of thousands that have been written, can be truly worth being called unique - I must keep reminding myself of a Rumi quote: "You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop."