There are mornings when I wake and feel the simple weight of being alive; the rise of my chest, the warmth in my hands, the quiet pulse that keeps time beneath my skin. Existence itself feels like a gift I did nothing to earn.
And a gift always has a giver.
To be grateful that I exist is to acknowledge that my life did not begin with me. Someone... or something... opened a door I could not have opened on my own. Someone allowed me to walk this road, to breathe this air, to take my place in the long, unfolding story of the world.
There are moments on the road when I pause, look around, and realize that the life beneath my feet was once only a distant dream. What I now call ordinary was, not so long ago, a hope whispered into the dark.
It’s a strange habit of the human heart—how quickly it grows restless, how easily it forgets the grace of what has already arrived. We hunger for the next horizon, the next comfort, the next shining thing, and in that reaching we risk losing sight of the gifts already resting in our open palms.
So I remind myself to slow down. To breathe. To honor the quiet abundance that surrounds me.
The present I stand in today is something my former self longed for. And it deserves to be cherished before I wander off in search of another dream.