Everyday

Life's bare necessities

Everyday

Everyday is a beautiful life —

inconsistent, unmet, imperfect,

and still beautiful,

though we rarely choose to see it that way.

We dwell instead on what disappoints us,

draining the joy from what remains,

remembering only the frozen frames

of pure ecstasy

rather than living inside

the ordinary moment that holds it.

Our time is short.

We make it shorter still

with how we spend it —

Seneca knew this centuries ago,

though it is no less true for being old:

the brevity is not the tragedy.

The waste is.

We live in regret

not because life withheld beauty from us,

but because we were too busy elsewhere

to notice it had already arrived.

It is a wonderful life —

or it isn't,

depending only on this:

whether you live through purpose,

or chase the things

that only deepen your worry.

So breathe.

Let the noise settle.

Open your eyes

to what was always there,

and choose, finally,

to live it

through the gifts that are only yours to give.

Only then

can you rightly call it

a wonderful life.