I had a wonderful coffee meeting yesterday with my friend Reid from http://www.readreidread.com/.  Incredibly talented writer, spiritual ally and great friend.  He pointed out that his favorite sentence in one of my posts: Patience in evolution was “life is amazing”.  I felt that it is appropriate to elaborate upon this. 

Sometimes we forget that we are this unique conscious species spinning on a life covered planet seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  Everything in our quantum universe is so perfectly balanced that we get the rare opportunity to wake up in the morning and experience what we call ”our day”.  Every so often, in the midst of complaining about my cold Starbuck’s coffee or how the asshole driver in front of me is taking too long to accelerate when the light turns green; I stop and remind myself that life is in fact unbelievably amazing. 

I have travelled about this world a bit and have come to see beauty everywhere I go.  I love meeting new people and exploring new territory.  My friend Trevor once said that “life is as beautiful as it is tragic” and I would like to further point out that we get what we see.  If our mind is primed to see tragedy then we will see life as tragic.  While this issue of focus seems obvious we still tend toward auto-pilot.  For instance, when someone asks me how I am doing.  If I say “fantastic, everything is good” then they tend to say “that’s good”.  If I respond with ”terrible”, then the response is usually “why, what’s wrong?”.  Our monkey mind craves the gossip and drama.  Slowing down and appreciating everything requires very little effort.  

In an earlier post entitled “Humility” I stated that my current mantra was “I don’t know”.  This is still true but now it has an addendum…  I don’t know but life sure is amazing.  Rather than complaining that it’s snowing out again, I will contemplate how snow happens.  This isn’t going to happen all of the time though.  Sometimes there are just days where I feel like shit and I have a right to that experience too.  The point is that there is always room for improvement in regards to my optimism, empathy, compassion and capacity to love. 

Here is comedian Louis CK’s perspective

I’m grateful to be surrounded by such loving and supportive people.  At the times where life hands my ass to me, I can rest in the thought that I have huge resources of awesome to draw from. 

Life is amazing and I am blessed.  So are you. 

Celebrate that.