For billions of years, across endless darkness… stars were born, and burned, and died. An nobody mourned their passing nor thought them beautiful.

But in the wake of their violent death came new stars.
Slowly evolving over the eons. Denser. Heavier.
Until at last, at least one fragile dot was formed,
At least one line of chemical replicators born.

And for millions of years,
Biological creatures were born and lived and died,
Incapable of mourning each other’s passing,
nor thinking the world around them beautiful.

But in the wake of *their* violent death came children,
Slowly evolving over the eons,
Not in any particular direction that anyone intended.

Until, at last, two boundaries were passed:

The border between uncaring matter,
And matter arranged into patterns with desires and drive.

The border between unthinking matter,
And matter that could contemplate the patterns around it.

And somewhere, at some point, in those fertile imaginations,
The first ideas took hold. The first stories were told.

And for thousands of years,
Stories were born, and lived, and often but did not always die.
They evolved, not precisely in any particular direction,
but neither entirely directionless.
We shaped our stories, and they shaped us in turn.

In time, they came to drive our civilization.

Our stories have helped us to thrive,
to perservere against overwhelming odds.
Our stories helped us to cooperate,
When by all rights we should have destroyed one another.

And sometimes, our stories led us to genocide,
Or to erect institutions beyond our control,
Indifferent to our suffering.

We live in a world where suffering and death are realities.
And I will not try to tell you that that is somehow okay, because it’s not.
And I will not try to tell you that we will necessarily ever overcome those things,
Because I don’t know for certain whether we can,
And tonight is *not* about blind hope.

I can tell you will we will try.

And I can tell you this:
That Galileo. Anne Frank. Rosa Parks. Carl Sagan.
Everyone you’ve ever loved.
Not anyone who ever was, but everyone you’ve ever heard of…
There is a sense in which a small part of those people have survived,
Their patterns preserved in the stories we tell.

And that might seem meaningful to you, or it might not.
But what definitely seems meaningful to me is this:

We are part of a story that is greater than ourselves.
Our pursuit of truth, and our pursuit of happiness –
In some ways they are incredibly fragile.
But compared to any one of us,
They are incredibly difficult to extinguish.

We are a part of a story that is powerful, and beautiful and will probably outlive us.
It could possibly outlive our children.
It could potentially outlive humanity.

We, the people in this room, the people on this planet, have the power to shape those stories, and guide them into the future.