Today’s blog may seem a little far out. Bear with me and I’ll try to make some sense of it all.
We often hear people saying, “Why haven’t we found life in space?” The truth is, we have. It’s us. You and me. We’re life and we’re in space, so we have found life in space.
Could there be life on planets besides Earth? Sure, there could be. Think of all the billions or trillions of planets out there. Wouldn’t we be foolish, and maybe even selfish, to think Earth is the only planet to contain life?
I personally believe there are other forms of life out there and one day we may even find some of them, or they’ll find us. I don’t think we’re alone in this universe. We’re simply not that special.
So, what does all of this have to do with Myasthenia Gravis? Those of us who have MG sometimes tend to picture ourselves as unique. We consider ourselves different among everyone else, sometimes to the point of believing we live on another planet. We tend to think “This is happening to me.” The truth is Myasthenia Gravis is happening to approximately 700,000 people worldwide.
And you thought you were alone, didn’t you?
It only seems like we’re alone because we’re so close to it. We can see how MG affects us each and every day, but we can’t see how it affects others. That makes us feel like we’re living on an island, but in reality, all 700,000 of us are living on one little island together…. called Earth.
While MG isn’t the same for everyone, there’s 700,000 other people out there that are going through many of the same challenges you face every day. Some will handle those challenges well and some not so well. Some will have annoying symptoms and some will have debilitating symptoms. Some will go on to lead normal lives and some will succumb to the illness. While we may know a few of these people, we certainly don’t know all of them and there’s an almost 100% chance that we won’t meet all of them in our lifetime.
When we put that in perspective, that means we’re not really as unique as we thought we were. The reality is, our condition isn’t all that unique and what we’re going through isn’t all that extraordinary. Sure, MG is considered rare as our special group represents less than 0.02% of the world’s population, but 700,000 is still a significant number. It makes us realize that although we’re rare, we’re not alone. That also means there’s someone out there, somewhere, who has MG and could use an MG friend. I encourage you to find one and share your journey together.
You are one person with MG in a world of 700,000 others. You’re not alone. Chances are if you were to travel your city, your state, your country, your continent, the world, you would eventually run into someone with Myasthenia Gravis.
Going back to our original topic, it’s all about probabilities, isn’t it? What if life on earth represented only 0.02% of the universe’s population? That would mean 99.98% of all other forms of life would come from somewhere other than Earth. We wouldn’t be alone, would we? We might be isolated, but certainly not alone.
How naive of us to think that we are the only life form in the universe. We’re probably not unique, just like you having MG is not unique. Someday, as we gain the knowledge and ability to explore the universe, we’ll probably run into other life forms. Who knows, we may not have to go far to find them!