Tea is disgusting. I don’t know how people’s taste buds enjoy it so. But mine sure don’t, and this cup I’m currently gagging down is not the most enjoyable hot beverage I’ve had. But hey, there are worse things in the world.
Being alive is a strange thing, isn’t it? Having taste buds that have an opinion. An inner desire to fill the void inside that you just know is there even though you’ve never seen it. A brain wired perfectly so you can see, taste, smell and run all at the same time.
Being a human being is equally as strange. Perhaps it’s just me. There is so much going on in the world, so much life buzzing and swarming around, it may seem like chaos but is really quite designed. Artwork. It’s silly to think that because of how we feel inside–as if the roaring waves of the ocean will come crashing down on our hopes and dreams and secrets–that we expect the rest of the world to stop buzzing and swarming and living and help us make sense of our compass again.
Sometimes it’s in His plan that our compass forgets which way is north. Perhaps it’s a way of tripping us because we’re too busy smelling, seeing, breathing and running. We’ve forgotten how to stop, how to recognize the fact that we’re merely here because the paintbrush stroked us into existence along with the rest of the buzzing and swarming things.
Why is it so easy to get consumed with ourselves–how we feel, how we look, what we do, where we’re going? Because we’re human beings; and that is why being a human is so strange. There is so much life around us yet we fail to recognize it because of the withering flowers of our souls. There is a beautiful masterpiece to be a part of, a brilliant stroke of paint to dance around in. Instead of dwelling on the little details of our personal happiness, on checking off our bucket lists and parading our resumes. Or fixing ourselves with therapy and drowning insecurities in busy work. You fill in the blank, we all have a pencil.
Once you–I–realize the fact and really grasp the concept of being just a certain hue in a certain (and very deliberate) masterpiece, perhaps life would no longer be mundane. Or self-centered.
Perhaps your breath would be more meaningful. The sights you take in more beautiful. The conversations you have more intentional.
So inhale. And then let it out. Wake up. You’re alive and that’s something to celebrate.
“I am tiny and yet I am here. I have been given senses, awareness, existence, and placed on a stage so crowded with the vast, so teeming with the tiny, that I can do nothing but laugh, and sometimes laugh and cry.
Living makes dying worth it.”
–N.D. Wilson
