Remember What A Gift It Is To Be Alive

Be outside – as much as you can, whenever you can. Feel the air of a new day fill your lungs with the smell of freshly cut grass and cherry blossoms and possibilities. Listen to the birdsong. Watch the sun tilt the sky into a kaleidoscope of reds and pinks and mauves. Breathe in deeply.

Be outside come rain, wind, or shine. Tilt your head to a cloudless blue sky, and stomp your way through puddled city streets. The sun will fill you up with light and life; the rain will wash away the frustrations of a morose and tiresome day. Raise your arms high to the air, and let the wind comb through your hair and ripple your clothes.

Feel it kiss your face and blow away the cobwebs of former pain and forgotten love. Lie back against grass warmed by the summer sun.

Hike up a mountain. Learn how to sail. Walk barefoot in the sand, or wade out into the ocean surf, and wince slightly as the water curls icily against your rolled-up jeans. Make daisy chains.

Watch in awe as your city melts from spring to summer to fall. Watch the winter trees creak alive and bloom into lashes of leaves and rainbow colors, year after year. Eat ice cream in the park before it drips onto the grass at your feet in a sodden, summer heap. Stay up all night, and dance under the light of the full moon. Draw patterns in the sea of stars. Pick crisp reddened leaves, and gorge on wild blackberries. Throw yourself into a thick layer of snow and make angels. Wrap gloved hands around a mug of hot chocolate as you shiver outside on a frosty Christmas morning. Kiss in the snow.

Be alone. Take yourself away from people, just for a while. Find a place in the world where you can be at one with the sky and the earth. Get lost in the forest, or sit and gaze out to sea. Let your anger and your tiredness and your boredom ebb away into the ground, when you realize just how small you are. Feel yourself finally feeling yourself again.

For when you are outside, apart but a part of everything in this world, you remember what a gift it is to be alive.