It occurred to me today that some simple math can help to keep our pride in check.

There are approximately 7,800,000,000 people alive today. I am only one of those. You are only one of those. That means, besides you and I, that there are 7,799,999,998 other people on the planet.

But, maybe you think of yourself as a big deal; my pride makes me think of myself as a big deal. So, let’s say there are a thousand people (if you or I are lucky) that agree with me (or with you) that I’m pretty hot stuff (or that you are).

7,799,999,000 aren’t even aware of your existence, or of mine.

Additionally, global estimates on the number of people who have ever lived, depending on how you might go about trying to estimate that number, put the number just slightly above, or slightly below, one hundred billion. So, assuming that there are a number of people –whatever that number might be– who were once alive who knew you/thought highly of you/were touched by your existence, let’s add that number to the number of people that you have in your ‘living entourage’.

Then, subtract that new number from 100,000,000,000.

In short, there are more than one hundred billion people, who have lived or are currently living, that know nothing about you. How important can you really be?

If you’re starting to get lost in the numbers a little bit, let me paint a picture for you.

Imagine a cube-shaped container, one hundred feet tall, and one hundred feet wide, and one hundred feet long. Or, if that’s hard to imagine, imagine instead a container that is about the same size and dimensions as a ten-story building in a city.

The container, no matter how you’ve imagined it, is filled with sand.

Then, imagine removing from that massive container of sand, a single teaspoon of sand.

That teaspoon, if you used a standard teaspoon, would have about 40,000 grains of sand in it.

Imagine all of the sand that would remain in that container (one hundred feet tall and one hundred feet wide and one hundred feet long, approximately the size of a ten-story building) if you only took out a teaspoon of sand. All of that sand in that massive cube, and quite honestly, most of the sand in the teaspoon that you’re holding (since you probably don’t have 40,000 people who are aware of your existence) represents the people who have no idea that you exist.

If that doesn’t humble you, then think of the famous people, the names that are constantly topping the news.

There probably isn’t a person in America who hasn’t heard the names Donald Trump or Joe Biden lately. There are currently about 328,000,000 people in America. Or, take Cristiano Ronaldo, a Portuguese soccer player, who has 237,000,000 followers on Instagram (more than anyone else on Instagram). And, of course, there are other famous people all over the world, of whom hundreds of millions of people are aware of their existence.

There are two million grains of sand in a cup of sand.

So, if the world’s most famous Portuguese soccer player removed one and a half five-gallon buckets of sand from the structure that we were describing a moment ago, what a much more significant removal of sand that would be, compared to my fraction of a teaspoon of sand.

Would it even make a dent in the structure?

None of us –not even one– ever really amounts to much of anything, mathematically speaking.

* * *

If you object to this approach to attempting to calculate how insignificant each of us is –> and who wouldn’t — it’s humiliating to think of how out of proportion my pride really is –> then maybe something more complex could do a better job of giving us a good reason to be proud of ourselves.

I’m thinking of a formula that incorporates 1) the number of people who know us, and 2) the significant impact that we’ve made on the lives of the people who would fall into the first category.

For example, Cristiano Ronaldo and I happen to fall in completely different categories when it comes to ‘fame’. So, when you think about the number of people who know of him, and the number of people who know of me, of course the proportions are way off. But, a more intricate measure of my impact, and of his impact, might change things.

For example, let me ask the question, “Who counts on Cristiano Ronaldo?” Maybe his teammates and coaches do, on the team that he plays soccer for. He’s not married, as of the moment that I’m writing this, so he is somewhat detached in that sense.

Did you ever wonder why the government calls them ‘dependents’? Because they depend on us.

We’ll call it a reliance factor. It’s a measure of the extent to which someone relies on you.

Maybe it’s the case the Cristiano Ronaldo has more followers on Instagram than there are grains of sand in a five-gallon bucket, it is probably not the case that he has a significantly higher number of people relying on him than the number of people who are relying on me, is there?

When it comes down to it, those are the people that really matter, aren’t they?

Does it matter that there are multiple continents of the world where all of the inhabitants of that continent are unaware that I exist? Not to me, it doesn’t. The people that matter the most are the closest to me.

But, since this is a post about pride, and how ridiculous it is, let me make a final point.

The world existed before me, and it will exist after I’m gone; the same is true for you. Things seemed to have been going pretty well leading up to my birth, and the planet will continue to spin on its axis after I’ve shuffled off this mortal coil.

Humility seems to make a lot more sense, when you really stop and think about it. Pride is probably the most common form of foolishness.

Feel free to call me a fool the next time to you see me.