 picture taken from interestingthings.info I’m a dude. A male. A manly man, if you will. So pregnancy will always be quite a mystery to me. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. Whenever I see a pregnant woman, my mind is utterly and completely blown. That bulge is housing a person. A human being. Now, if you think too hard about it, the mind wanders to some creepy, “Alien”-esque stuff. But before that cookie crumbles, it’s a beautiful thing to think. Likely, if you’re reading this, you came into this world through this exact miracle. And I think that’s pretty cool. The number of things that had to align for you to come into existence is honestly perplexing: your parents had to meet, one had to woo the other, they had to be intimate (if you don’t know what I mean, please ask your parents) … never mind mentioning the biology/biochemistry/physics of how the natural process itself goes down. And then YOU. You exist. You’re here. You’re breathing, thinking, feeling, experiencing. Even reading this! (Which you may regret by the end anyway as a waste of time, but hey: it’s cool nonetheless). HOW JADED HAVE WE BECOME THAT WE CAN FORGET ALL OF THE INCREDIBLE PARTS OF LIFE - EVEN THE VERY FACT THAT WE’RE ALIVE I think our very existence is extremely simple to take for granted. The miracle of you being you, of me being me, of we being we, is so obvious to us that we can totally and completely forget it. And then we get bogged down in the details of everyday living. I heard someone say on the radio (Yes, I listen to the radio. And not just regular radio - talk radio. I’m actually 80 years old) something that has rung around in my head since then. He described every day events as the “mundane realities of life”. Seriously? Come on, now. How jaded have we become that we can forget all of the incredible parts of life - even the very fact that we’re alive - and characterize our daily experiences as mundane?! Yet, I know we all fall victim to this manner of thinking. Maybe even on a daily basis. We’re occupied with paying bills, with eating food, with sleeping 8 hours a night (let’s be real: if it’s 5+ we’re all pretty happy), with brushing our teeth, with driving through traffic to work, with walking the dog; the list goes on. For myself, it’s the moments where I find myself getting caught up in things that don’t really matter in the long run that I lose that perspective on life. I get distracted by thoughts like, “Do I look good enough today?” “Am I cool or interesting enough for people to want to hangout with me?” “Do I have enough money? Do I buy the right things?” “…” The list goes on. EXPERIENCES CAN BE GOOD OR EXPERIENCES CAN BE BAD, BUT IN MY OPINION EXPERIENCE ITSELF IS AN UNBELIEVABLE MIRACLE. I’m not an expert, and I know I’ll likely get backlash from this, but these are the sort of thoughts that allow people to fall into the curse of depression. In my humble, uninformed, Caucasian-male opinion, it’s a loss of perspective. When we forget how incredible it is that we are alive every day, of course it’s easy to lose hope and forget joy. When we get distracted by the little things, we simply can’t see the forest for the trees; we, regretfully, are blinded by the periodic pain and hurt we can find in each day, yet overlook the fact that we are even experiencing anything! Experiences can be good or experiences can be bad, but in my opinion experience itself is an unbelievable miracle. Here’s a scenario I bet most of us have starred in at least once: it’s Tuesday afternoon, you’ve just finished work/school, you’re hungry, you’re tired from not sleeping the night before because Netflix wouldn’t let you stop watching How I Met Your Mother until you finally do meet her (and she *spoiler alert* dies anyway), your phone is dead and you were expecting a phone call from your mom/husband/uncle/sister whose last three calls you’ve ignored because you were at the bank/grocery store/post office, and then all of a sudden you hear the crunch of your bumper as it makes contact with the car in front of you (and on the Whitemud at 6pm of all places). You step out of your vehicle to receive the torrent of angry accusations from the other driver. You try to call the tow truck but to no avail because your phone is still dead. So you sit down, defeated. You let out a big sigh. “You’ve won, life,” you think to yourself. “I’m tired of always losing.” Yes, an edition of this story has happened to me. I’ve thought those thoughts, and thinked those thinks. Most of us have. But take a step back. WHAT I DO KNOW IS HOW SATISFYING IT IS TO LOSE YOURSELF IN THE JOY OF WHAT I BELIEVE TO BE GOD-GIVEN LIFE AND PURPOSE. You woke up this morning. You were breathing. You are breathing. Your feelings have been hurt throughout the day, but you’ve been blessed to feel at all! Amidst even the worst of days, you’ve still experienced the greatest thing that we can experience: life itself.
Aside: I don’t mean to minimize the pain that we all go through. And, honestly, you’re probably going through way worse pain than I am. I don’t know. But what I do know is how satisfying it is to lose yourself in the joy of what I believe to be God-given life and purpose. I don’t mean to seem accusatory; I merely wish to encourage. end of aside If you have an eternal mindset, be you of whatever religious or spiritual ethos, this life now is a blessing. If your view of life ends with this life, this is all ya got. Either way, we can’t afford to forget or dismiss this phenomenon called life. And possibly more so, we can’t afford to neglect the wonder of childbirth. #thankyoumom
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