This Has Happened Before

The stories of you before you.

Before you were born, there were your parents. Before them, their parents. Before them, their parents, and so on, stretching back through the centuries, millennia, and eons—back to the very beginning of time itself. If even a single one of those pairings hadn’t happened, if one ancestor had chosen a different path, taken a different step, or fallen in love with someone else, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t exist.

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about these sorts of moments: Five hundred years ago, maybe some peasant in a small European village fell in love with a farmer from the next town over. Maybe they met at a market, exchanged shy glances, and decided to build a life together. Fast forward five centuries, and here you are, reading these words. But what if that peasant had decided not to walk to the next village that day? What if they’d stayed home, too tired or too afraid to venture out? What if they’d never met that farmer? The chain of events that led to you wou…