Training with DNA

I was curious about something at work yesterday, but I kept it to myself until now. I wondered, why should office politics and pressure get me down when all I am is a passenger train for deoxyribonucleic acid?

…so little of (our) DNA has any discernible purpose. It starts to get a little unnerving, but it does really seem that the purpose of life is to perpetuate DNA. The 97 percent of our DNA commonly called junk is largely made up of clumps of letters that, in (science writer Matt) Ridley’s words, "exist for the pure and simple reason that they are good at getting themselves duplicated.” Most of your DNA, in other words, is not devoted to you but to itself: you are a machine for reproducing it, not it for you. Life…just wants to be, and DNA is what makes it so.

- Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything