“Human life is a wild, extraordinary phenomenon: elements are brewed in the center of stars and exploding super-nova, and spewed across the universe. They eventually clump into a minor planet around a modest star; then, after some billions of years, this ‘star dust’ becomes complex molecules with self-replicating capacities that we call life. More billions of years pass and these self-replicating molecules join together into more complex forms, evolve into organisms that gain awareness and then consciousness, and finally, eventually, consciousness of their consciousness — stardust turned into conscious living matter aware of its own existence. And with that comes consciousness of mortality.