Sometimes when I notice a streetlamp come on in the afternoon, the complexity of it dawns on me. It's sturdy, well made. How would I ever roll that material up that way? How could I plant it into the ground so it stays standing? The material of it, where would I ever get the metal? The electricity, surely I would never have figured out how to make that, much less create whatever gargantuan distribution system that was required to turn the light on. And that it came on by itself at night: Is that a timer? A light sensor? Either way, were it up to me to make the thing from complete scratch, I doubt I would be able to crack it. The intellect of those that came before me gets almost overwhelming. How many lifetimes did it take to come up with all of this? How many to build it? And then I look down the street and see dozens more, so common that they are hardly noticed, and realize that I am in a world built on incomprehensible amounts of human ingenuity. I think about how if I were born even just a few decades sooner the world would be nearly unrecognizable to me. Once my mind hits this point, I find it impossible to feel anything but gratitude for the lifetimes laid before me to create the world I now inhabit.