This Cosmic Pebble

I felt a moment of awe, a recognition that life on earth was fragile and delicate, and owed everything to the sun. I turned around and looked at the universe and shivered because it was so vast and essentially empty. I thought about Earth, this cosmic pebble circling a D-class star — and even then, this thing we call life inhabits only a tiny skim-coat of this fleck, and even within that thin coat, there isn't that much life at all. I looked back down at the planet and I thought, What a marvel to be among the fewest of few molecules in the universe allowed to experience this thing called life — stars and nebulas and black holes by the quadrillion, and yet only a few molecules on Earth get to be alive.