This Life is Impossible

On looking a miracle in the eye

Yesterday, I sat down on my yoga mat to engage with what some might call prayer. A few moments to bow my head, look at our Gods, and wink – “we’ve got this.”

And yet, within seconds, the tears began to fall. Like a stream, at first, then a crescendo into a river - gushing, unstoppable…messy. A river that, when released, sent chills down my spine - goosebumps, like pebbles, dotting skin.

It was my 34th birthday, and the realization flooded in - this life is an impossible miracle.

I know of this. I speak of this often. I write about it, talk about it with my friends. But today. This day. I felt the ripples in my body. I felt the miracle like a pulse - undeniable.

I thought:

I have a healthy, functioning body
I have people in my life that I love
I woke up in a safe home, with nourishing food to eat
I live in a country that’s acting crazy, but lets me be free

Of all possible permutations of how this life could have shaken out - I have everything I could ever need. I went through the ways this could have been different - the ways I might have been different. How easy it would be to lose it all.

I realized:

Every step that I take is living proof of a miracle
Every breath that I take defies death
Within every laugh, every tear, every time I step outside –
Lies the knowledge that can truly set me free

And that knowledge is this:

The odds of this moment are statistically impossible

And yet - here I am.
So who will I be?

What might I do if I looked a miracle in the eye?
How might that change the way that I live?

Who might benefit from my refusal to turn away?
Who might suffer each time I try to hide?

These are the questions I am bringing into this new lap around the sun.
A practice in acting on gratitude.

Not by making a list - but by feeling the contents of it.
Letting the current of it take me where it will.

I imagine: a new river
Unstoppable, messy
A refusal to yield
By nature

I hear: a crescendo
A rise
A build
A sound of triumphant celebration

I see: a life
Impossible
Possible
Brief
Miraculously mine

And so

I vow:
To be responsible for my days

To remember:
To make forgetting
Short-lived

To feel:
My life
Every laugh, every tear

My pulse
Beating through
Dotted skin