Be astonished that you’re here

Life is full of tiny irritations.

And if we’re not careful…

They can become our personality.

You’ve met that person.

The one whose only conversation is a complaint. A whinge.

But every now and then, something interrupts the routine.

A funeral.

A hospital visit.

An old photograph.

A near death experience.

Suddenly, the things that seemed so important a few hours earlier become almost laughable.

Because in those moments, you remember something that should never have been forgotten.

You are alive.

You forgot again didn’t you?

You were sleepwalking through it again. Scrolling through it. Forgetting to actually live.

Against impossible odds.

On a small planet, spinning through an unimaginably vast universe.

You can see.

Hear.

Laugh.

Love.

Taste fresh bread.

Feel the summer breeze.

Stand beneath a sky full of stars and wonder why any of this exists at all.

That is extraordinary.

Yet most days we rush past it as though being alive were the most ordinary thing in the world.

It isn’t.

It is the rarest thing.

The strangest thing.

An unexplainable thing.

Which brings us to today’s lesson.

Try to spend less of your life asking,

“What’s wrong today?”

And more of it asking,

“How am I lucky enough to be here at all?”

The difficult days will still come.

People you love will still leave.

Your heart will still be broken.

That is part of the price of loving this life.

But do not let the hardships make you blind to the miracle that surrounds them.

One day, this astonishing privilege of being alive will quietly come to an end.

Before it does…

Notice the breeze.

Notice the sky.

Notice the ordinary day you almost rushed through.

Be astonished.

Not occasionally.

Every single day you wake up.