Perhaps this landed hard for me because I am not a scientist. When I came across this quote in Rolf Dobelli’s excellent book The Art of the Good Life I was stunned because it provides a glimpse into our personal history that I hadn’t thought about much before.

King Louis XIV’s reign was from 1643 until his death in 1715. I find it cool to think about the fact that there were approximately 4,000 people walking around then that would give rise to me 300+ years later. Unlike the King of France, they were ordinary people, mostly lost to history. And yet I wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for them. I wonder who they were and what their lives were like. I also wonder (not having submitted my DNA to a company for testing) where exactly they lived? I suspect there were some in Holland, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, and Germany, but I’d love to know more about them.

Impermanence also comes to mind when thinking about this quote. Our lives are finite, but they matter to others and their effects ripple into the future.

Indeed, going the other direction, this quote makes me wonder who is walking around today (other than my wife) who will also be an ancestor of our progeny 300s years hence, if my DNA is so lucky.

The metaphor of a chain comes to mind. Each of us is a link in a chain stretching into the past and ahead into the future. A mystery of life is that we won’t know most of the other people in the chain, but they are there, unseen and unknown. And yet, we are still dependent on each other.