Not all miracles are miracles

I’ve already made a similar observation in a previous blog post, but I’d like to elaborate. Yesterday, my wife and I went for what will likely to be our final visit to the doctor before our baby arrives. As I stop and think about nearly every moment of our time there, it is easy to imagine that the entire process was a string of miracles.

First, we drove our car, which effectively requires no effort from me, into a giant concrete parking garage that can hold the weight of hundreds of cars. Think about that. I’d say this garage held, conservatively, over 1 million pounds worth of human-teleportation vehicles in it without budging, much less collapsing. That is pretty cool.

We walked in and used another magical transportation mechanism to get us to the third floor without the need for my 9-month-pregnant wife to use the stairs. By the way, we as humans have developed ways to build floors on top of floors to save space and enable more people to live closer together and enjoy greater social interaction and services that come with high population density. Also pretty cool.

We proceeded down a long hall through a building owned by a non-profit that wouldn’t exist without the cultural custom of generosity that has existed in the United States since its inception. When we walked into the room for our appointment, technology that would have been science fiction 100 years ago was all around us. Companies incentivized, by the possibility of profits, to make great products that serve the healthcare industry were represented in every corner of the room. The electronic bed, special lighting, biohazardous waste containers, some machine that they strap to my wife to check on baby without even actually seeing him. We didn’t even do an ultrasound, which was basically a superpower unique to Superman himself until that piece of wizardry was invented.

We take it for granted but it seems like a miracle when you stop and think about it. Only it isn’t. Miracles are things that happen that don’t make sense. There is a plausible explanation for everything I experienced at the hospital.

We live in a country where millions of individuals and businesses get to make their own decisions about what they find important and worthy of investing time and resources. And then everyone else gets to respond to those decisions with their own decisions. The net result is, on a small scale, what I experienced in the hospital yesterday – philanthropists building hospitals, builders pouring concrete, investors funding medical technology advancements and so on.

The fact that we can’t all have everything we want is not an indication that we are unlucky or that things aren’t working. It is a reflection of constraints inherent to this world. What we have may not be a miracle, but it is nothing short of amazing.