We have been asking very large questions. How did everything begin? We have asked, how did people begin? We have asked, how did our earth begin,how did our solar system begin, how did our galaxy begin? And we have even asked, how did all galaxies and all suns and all worlds begin?

We have read the answers given by different people from different lands and different times. We have asked both primitive people of long ago and the scientists of today. It has been a stirring adventure. We understand now how other people have felt. We see why they thought as they did, and we know why the scientists keep asking more and more questions. For like Kofi in Africa, we too can "go on thinking and thinking and never stop."

But let us come back to some of the smaller questions. How did you and I begin? How will we end, or will we ever end? These intimate questions about ourselves may have been waiting quietly all this time behind big questions.

When did you begin? Ten years ago? Fifteen years ago, did you say? Do you mean you began to be you the day you were born? How can that be? Did you not begin nine months before you were born? Doesn’t the thought start a wondering in your mind? Nine months before you were born, you were a small one-celled gelatin-like ball of life– not as big as the period at the end of this sentence. Was that speck you? How could you come out of that? It took the human race at least two billion years to evolve from one-celled protozoa into people. How is it you could make such a big change from a small one-celled animal into a human baby with billions and billions of cells in your body in so short a time as nine months?

The answer is that your one-celled beginning had in it something that the first protozoa did not have. It had already in it a much larger number of patterns to grow by. Those patterns were strung together in tiny strings inside your one-celled egg. The biologists call these patterns genes. Very wonderful microscopic pieces of life these genes are! For they had in them all the patterns your egg needed in order to grow into you. It is a mystery how these very tiny specks can hold such patterns and how they make the egg follow the patterns. It is as if these little genes could talk and say, "You are to be a boy with brown eyes and dark hair and dark skin," or just the opposite, whatever was needed to make you. Yet who ever heard of a one-celled living thing talking?

Probably in that long-ago time, when there were no living animals except the tiny one-celled protozoa, each of these tiny living things had at least one of those wondrous genes inside its cell. It needed something to show it how to be even just another protozoa. But your tiny egg, that began growing inside your mother’s body, needed thou- sands of patterns or genes to grow by if it was to know how to grow and grow in order to become you.

And where, we ask, did that little speck of life, that was your egg in the beginning, get those patterns to grow by? They came from two germ cells, one a male cell from your father’s body and the other a female cell from your mother’s body.When you were conceived (nine months before you were born), those two cells blended into one cell–into the beginning of you.

And where,we ask, did your father and mother get those small containers of life that could form together and make you? These thousands of special kinds of genes that were needed to make you had been kept alive ever since your father and your mother themselves were single cells inside their mothers. Again it is hard to imagine (but the scientists have good reason for believing it).

And how did your father and mother get their genes that told their eggs how to grow? From their four parents, that is, from your grandparents. And where did your grandparents get their genes to grow by? From their parents, that is from your great-grandparents. And where did your great-grandparents get their genes? How far back must we go to find your very first beglnnlng? We cannot stop, can we, until we have reached the very first living things that were in the beginning of time.Had not these living things lived in the long, long line of ancestors before you, the small egg that began to be you would never have known how to become you. For it was from them that your egg had slowly gathered the patterns for making you.It was because millions and millions of years ago male and female creatures began joining their dlfferent kind of germ cells together that you began, rather than an amoeba. Each new baby creature that was born was a little different from its parents, and some began trying out new ways of doing things. After a while these new ways became firm habits, so firm that new patterns were given to the new eggs to grow by.

The writers of the Hebrew Bible had an interesting way to report how persons have been connected with the people before them. They used a word that we seldom use now: begat. It means brought into being. For example, we read in the Bible, "Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah, etc." So we might describe your connections with those who have lived before you in this way. But we must think of large groups of living things as if they were one single living thing in order to keep your very long story short enough to tell. So this, we may say, is the story of the beginning of you.

The Protozoa begat the Volvox. The Volvox begat the Worm with Brains. The Worm with Brains begat the Fish. The Fish begat the Amphibian. The Amphibian begat the Reptile. The Reptile begat the Mammal. The Mammal begat the Ape. The Ape begat the Human. And the Human begat You.

These are the chapter titles in the long, long story of you. We feel the wonder of it, but who can explain it? In some way, something in all these kinds of living creatures is still living in you, and in every person now alive. You- or a part of you- are much, much older than you seem. You feel young. You look young. You have no memory of the ages before you were born. Yet you brought with you on your birthday some tell-tale signs that you already had inside you a number of patterns to grow by. The millions of cells in your baby body knew how to do thousands of things you have never consciously thought about. Their ancestor cells had gotten used to doing these things "without thinking" thousands of years before you were born. You belong in a living chain, a spiral millions of years old and millions of people and animals long.

And will some of these patterns-to-grow-by that are in you go on living in your children and in your children’s children after your body dies? Surely, we cannot imagine this living chain as ending with you. What kinds of patterns for growing will you and your mate be passing on to your children? Can you do anything about improving these patterns? How?

The past has been long. The future may be even longer. We began with questions. We continue with other and harder questions still unanswered.