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My name is Jake. I was born 4,165 days ago on October 26, 2000. I live on this planet with 7,080,360,000 other people. This is a story of some of those people. Today the average person will say 2,250 words to 7.4 other individuals. We’ll send over 300 billion emails, 19 billion text messages, all adding to the giant mosaic of patterns and ratios. Mathematical in design, these patterns are hidden in plain sight. You just have to know where to look. But only some of us can see how the pieces fit together. It’s all been predetermined by mathematical probability, and it’s my job to keep track of those numbers, to make the connections for those who need to find each other … the ones whose lives need to touch. I was born on October 26, 2000. I’ve been alive for 11 years, four months, 25 days, and 13 hours. And all that time … I’ve never said a single word. But that’s okay. I have someone who hears me now.

7 billion people on a tiny planet … suspended in the vastness of space … all alone. How we make sense of that is the great mystery of our frail existence. Maybe it’s being alone in the universe that holds us all together … keeps us needing one another in the smallest of ways … creating a quantum entanglement …of you … of me …of us. And if that’s really true … then we live in a world where anything is possible.

There are three million species of animals living in tropical rain forests, and one of them, the red fire ant, lives underground. Under constant threat of annihilation from flash floods.  Nature doesn’t care. If a species wants to survive, it has to prove it deserves too. When the floods come, fire ants hold on to each other, creating a living raft that can float until the water recedes. Months, if necessary. So how does a species figure something like that out? Instinct? Trial and error? Was there one fire ant who was being swept away by the rushing water… and grabbed on to another ant, only to find that together they could float? What if you were the one who knew what needed to be done … but you had no words? How do you make the others understand? How do you call for help?

Human beings are not the strongest species on the planet. We’re not the fastest, or maybe even the smartest. The one advantage we have is our ability to cooperate … to help each other out. We recognize ourselves in each other, and we’re programmed for compassion, for heroism, for love. And those things make us stronger, faster … and smarter. It’s why we’ve survived. It’s why we even want to.

The first transatlantic telegraph cable was made of 340,500 miles of copper and iron wire, designed to stretch 2,876.95 miles along the ocean floor. Once the cable was in place, you could use electrical impulses and signal code to send any message you wanted to the other side of the world. Human beings are hardwired with the impulse to share our ideas … and the desire to know we’ve been heard. It’s all part of our need for community.  That’s why we’re constantly sending out signals and signs. And why we look for them from other people. We’re always waiting for messages. Hoping for connection. And if we haven’t received a message, that doesn’t always mean it hasn’t been sent to us. Sometimes it means we haven’t listened hard enough.

In spite of all our communication technology, no invention is as effective as the sound of the human voice. When we hear the human voice, we instinctively want to listen, in hopes of understanding it. Even when the speaker is searching for the right words to say. Even when all we here is yelling, or crying, or singing. That’s because the human voice resonates differently from anything else in the world. That’s why we can hear a singer’s voice over the sound of a full orchestra. We will always hear that singer, no matter what else surrounds it.

490,000 babies will be born today. Each of them unique. And each one of them a link in the greater human chain. And the moment their umbilical cord is severed … they’ll become an individual, their own hopes, dreams, and desires. But, in fact, each one of us is actually made up of a dozen systems … which, in turn, comprise 60 trillion cells, and those cells house countless proteins, DNA organelles. What appears to be an individual is actually a network. Each one of us is, in fact, a living, breathing community, but it doesn’t stop there. Why would it? Every individual hope you harbor, every dream you entertain, every desire you fulfill has an impact far greater than you can imagine. At least that’s how it looks from where I’m sitting.

The threads that connect us are not bound by space or time. What seems to be individual, like a twist of fate, from another perspective, is simply one of those threads pulled tight. How things should have been all along. And even when those threads seem irreparably frayed … they never break. Not completely. But sometimes, the most important connection is here, and now.