Do We Take Life and Being Alive for Granted?

As I walked home from my daily walk this morning I saw a little girl so focused on her smart phone, that she never noticed the birds and the miracles of nature swirling around her,  Last week when I walked through a beautiful local park, a group of people passed by me. They were busily talking with each other and on their phones, they never looked up or around to see the beauty of their surroundings.

All too many of us have become desensitized to the small imperceptible miracles around us.  We take life and the gift of being alive for granted.  I have a smart phone,  but when I go for a walk, it stays home.  When I head out into nature it is tucked away.  I make a choice, it is up to me to decide how I treat each day. I choose to stop being so focused on a missed call or text to notice my surroundings and experiencing the joy of peace and quiet.

I have trained myself to pay attention, to the smallest of things,  I believe that we have today only. We may not have tomorrow, life is not guaranteed.  Speeding along through each day waiting for some future goal, paycheck, event or change to happen is missing the point of life.  We aren’t here for the outcome, we are here for the enchantment of the journey.

So, slow down, look around you, breathe in the fresh air. There is magic in the tiniest most imperceptible of places. The miracle of a bird flying by, a butterfly floating through the air, the flowers that grow where humans have thrown trash, the trees that continue to push through the ground and provide us with oxygen even though we’ve put in paved roads and sidewalks.  Mother earth continues to survive beyond the human invasion.

The very least we can do is put our technology down when we are in the midst of it all.  The most we can do is care enough about ourselves to notice and be conscious of the wonder of being alive.