With everything that we're faced with in life, it's easy to get caught up on things that don't matter so much. We let such trivial things have such an impact on our lives, and we often forget that there is so much more going on out there that we will never know. We get so focused on our own lives and our own problems that we lose sight of the bigger picture. I want to help put that big picture in perspective for people.

Other people and you:

• There are over 7 billion people in the world.
• The average human life expectancy is around 82 years old, which amounts to a little under 30,000 days.
• Let’s say on average you meet two people per day in 30,000 days, which is generous.
• You only meet maybe 60,000 people in your lifetime. And that’s not just your friends and family, that’s EVERYONE you have ever met and will ever meet.
• Again, the world has 7 BILLION people.
• You would only meet about 0.00086% of the people on Earth. There are still over 6.9 BILLION people living on the planet at the same time as you are that you will never meet.

Let's talk about people a little more...

• 783 million people do not have access to clean water
• 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty
• 1/4 of all humans live without electricity
• Hunger is the number one cause of death in the world

Does that crappy day you had last week seem as bad now?

Let's talk about the area!

• Texas is about 268,820 square miles. It is the second largest state in America and almost twice the size of Germany. Texas is huge!

(Via texasmonthly.com)

• While Texas is massive, it only makes up about 7% of America, which has a little less than 4 million square miles
• The earth has about 57,510,000 square miles of land
• America only makes up about 7% of the total land on earth, while Texas makes up less than .5% of the land on earth

Suddenly our great state seems pretty insignificant doesn't it?

Why stop there?

Earth is the fifth largest planet in our solar system, and the others are significantly bigger. I mean, look:

(via relfe.com)

You know the Sun? The center of our solar system? Yeah, it can fit about 1,300,000 planet Earths inside of it.

(via relfe.com)

One of the biggest stars in the universe is called VY Canis Majoris, and is said to be anywhere between 600 and 1200 times bigger than our Sun.

(via universetoday.com)

Our solar system is a very small part of our galaxy, which is an insignificant tiny spec in the universe. Can we just...

(via wikipedia.org)

How are you feeling? A little more grounded? I hope so. I think once we can understand our place in the grand scheme, we can put things into perspective better. The more we can think about the big picture, the more we start to realize that so many things that we thought mattered actually don't. We start to appreciate things more. We start to appreciate people more. We start to appreciate life more.