Think.
Think about your best friend. Think about how long you've known that person, how you've built up a relationship with him or her over the years. You've probably known that person for quite a while, you've maybe forgotten about how you met and some of the things you did together to make you best friends. The bonds you formed and opinions you forged together.
When you count up all the time you've spent with that person, all the words you've ever exchanged, all the ideas and emotions you've shared, it probably adds up to quite alot of interaction. Now think about the people in your family. The chances are you've forged some strong bonds and interacted with members of your family on the same sort of level.
Now think about your best friends family, they've forged similar bonds with their family. Imagine that each member of YOUR family also have best friends, your parents who are older than you have been around longer than you. They've interacted with a hell of alot more people for a longer period of time.
Include your extended family. We're building up a pretty complicated picture where there are ALOT of webbed bonds, all with links to each other, right? All with years and years of history, communication and interaction. All extending back to periods and places you've never been to, never heard about.
For every cool story your parents, grand-parents and friends have told you, there are another 50 they haven't told you about, or have forgotten about. All those places you've never seen, that will never exist again, all those ideas and certain situations and set of circumstances that existed for a fraction of a second, and were captured in someones mind many years ago, now forgotten and irretrievable.
Imagine all these pictures, people, faces, places, emotions, ideas, interactions and bonds, all creating pathways in life, all crossing over each other, winding madly around the surface of the Earth like animated pieces of string or neural pathways in your mind, all buzzing with electricity.
And while you hold this huge complicated image in your mind of all these people and moments which may or may not be linked together, which have existed momentarily or will exist forever, of all these thoughts and concepts which will never exist, which are only ideas created in someones mind. While you recognize the immense quantity of things going on here, understand that this is but a minescule fraction of ONE mind: your mind.
Everything which you've thought of, all the images thrown up in the back of your eyes, racing accross your brain, thousands and thousands of objects, real and imaginary, all existing for different lengths of time.
You've imagined so much in such a small amount of time, created so many possibilities. And yet throughout your whole life you'll do this time and time again. A second is an immeasurable amount of time for the human mind, an eternity.
Now factor in that there are around 6.5 billion people on this planet, each of them capable of what you've just done, and yet each entirely different from you. Each forging their own thoughts and ideas on different situations, creating new experiences from old ones, from their pathways. Their piece of the string randomly twists round this corner, and that one, edging close to that of your best friend, accross yours for a fraction of a second, and then off round the other side of the world.
6.5 billion people with an average life-span of 60 years, when 1 second is enough to imagine the whole world and all the people in it, all interconnected, breathing the same air, buzzing with the same life and energy, and yet each with their own history, their own situations and their own future.