I Am Not Alone. There are 249,999,999 Guys Just Like Me.
The picture above has 100,000 dots. You would have to stack 2,500 of them to show 250 million dots. I bet you underestimated what 250m dots looks like, didn’t you?
Launching a startup feels like there is someone screaming “We’re all counting on you! No pressure!” in your face at all times.
Startups are hard. Just yesterday I got discouraged about the amount of work I have to do and the amount of knowledge I have to acquire in order to do said work. There is simply no way I will be able to get it all done as quickly as I hoped. On Twitter I saw much younger, much more accomplished people sharing their stories and advice. Helpful, but I left with that awful feeling of being behind and falling further behind. It was kind of overwhelming.
Then this morning, I read an article that said everyone feels a sense of delay somewhere in their life. I think that is probably true. I suspect at some point everyone feels behind at life itself. “I’m not where I want to be doing the things I want to do. It’s going to take me forever to get there. I am behind.” It’s helpful to know I am not the only one who falls down into the pit of despair occasionally. I am not alone. I thought it would be fun to see how not alone I am.
There are 7.8 billion people in the world.
- Just over 50% of them are male like me.
- The World Bank tells me roughly 6.36% of them are in their 40’s like me.
Let’s do math:
7,800,000,000 X a little more than half X the percentage of 40 year olds = roughly 250m
I am one of 250 million dudes in their 40’s trying to figure out how to make tomorrow better than today. Our goals look different. Our problems look different. A lot looks different. But all of us have inhabited the same earth for the same 40+ years. We all have a heart and a brain. We are more alike than we are different, and there are 250 million of us.
“Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, continually stressed this to himself. I am a citizen of the world, he said. We are all made from the same material and revert back to the same material. We all have an important role to play.” — Daily Stoic 2/20/21
Back to math — 250 million is a huge number. I will prove it.
- If you were to make a stack of 250 million one-dollar bills, the stack would reach 16.98 miles into the stratosphere. Insane.
- The average male is 5.7 ft. If all us 40-year-old dudes stood on each other’s head, we would hit the moon and then still have enough dudes to keep going another 30,000 miles. We should try it.
- The picture at the top of this post is just 100,000 dots. It came from a fun piece titled “From 1 to 1,000,000” by Tim Urban on Wait But Why. Check it out HERE and be amazed by 1,000,0000 dots.
The sheer number of 40-year-old dudes in the world is nearly incomprehensible, and I am just one of them.
My problems don’t seem that big when I realize how small I am. That depresses some people. Not me. I am one of 250 million. I am not that big a deal. My problems are not any more important than the 249,999,999 other guys navigating this same human experience with me. Every single one of us has our own incredibly interesting story with its own twists and turns, up and downs. All of us have hopes and fears. We all have our own junk. The sheer volume and complexity is dizzying, but it is also humbling. It helps me get perspective on my junk.
As just one dude of the 250 million dudes representing the 40-year-old dude segment of the 7.8 billion people in the world, my junk really doesn’t matter as much as I sometimes like to think it does. If I fail, approximately 0.000005% of my fellow 40-year-old dudes might hear about it. Even fewer know I am behind at life and none of them care. It just doesn’t matter. The world is not counting on Patrick Elverum for anything. It got along fine without me before and will get along fine without me when I am gone. I am not actually behind at anything.
That’s not depressing. That’s freedom.
Freedom to do my very best today and be happy and content with that. Freedom to make this journey a little more fun for the people I encounter along the way. Freedom to wake up tomorrow and do it again.
When you find yourself discouraged and overwhelmed, remember you are not alone. There are literally hundreds of millions of people at your same stage sharing the planet with you and experiencing their own struggles. We are in this together. You are not alone (and you are not behind). Let that free you. We can do this. It will be awesome.
