"wisely or not by the attractions of similarity and difference"

"The things that make our lives are so tenuous, so unlikely, that we barely come into being, barely meet the people we're meant to love, barely find our way in the woods, barely survive catastrophe every day.  Your origin is due to two people come together, by accident, whether wisely or not by the attractions of similarity and difference, who survive each other's fears and limits long enough to create the collision of two cells from which you spring.  A million sperm swim at every egg, and somehow the one that makes the journey all the way begets you in combination with that single maternal cell; the faintest rearrangement of that unthinkable coupling and someone else arrives on earth out of that maze inside your mother; or no one comes into being; or your mother neglects one moment in that terrifying vulnerability that is your first few years and you are snuffed out like a candle, drowned in the bath, choked on a button found on the floor."

-- Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby