As soon as I walked outside, I was greeted with the shimmering white blanket of cold. Despite the chill overwhelming my skin, inside I was warm. I felt as though I could be giving off heat; I had the desire to stay out in this freeze for hours. It was the type of day that speaks to you through its elements; I took a deep breath to hear more snow was coming.
As I walked I looked up, trying to realize what made this day so beautiful, so serene. It was as if time had been put temporarily on hold and I along with it. Or maybe I was the only one unpaused…Either way, the solitude was comforting, and I sensed myself floating away. I sat down on the edge of a curb and listened. All there was to hear was the wind rushing over the top of my head and circling some old, cracking leaves some yards away. To me it was the reassuring sound of nature, trying not to be forgotten.
It did start to snow. None of those little flurries, but big, fat flakes which clung immediately to their surface.
Then it was time to go and my reverie had to end. As I began walking again, I drifted back into this time frame, calm and cleared.
Consider… YOU. In all time before now and in all time to come, there has never been and will never be anyone just like you. You are unique in the entire history and future of the universe. Wow! Stop and think about that. You're better than one in a million, or a billion, or a gazillion…
You are the only one like you in a sea of infinity!
You're amazing! You're awesome! And by the way, TAG, you're it. As amazing and awesome as you already are, you can be even more so. Beautiful young people are the whimsey of nature, but beautiful old people are true works of art. But you don't become "beautiful" just by virtue of the aging process.
Real beauty comes from learning, growing, and loving in the ways of life. That is the Art of Life. You can learn slowly, and sometimes painfully, by just waiting for life to happen to you. Or you can choose to accelerate your growth and intentionally devour life and all it offers. You are the artist that paints your future with the brush of today.
Paint a Masterpiece.
God gives every bird its food, but he doesn't throw it into its nest. Wherever you want to go, whatever you want to do, it's truly up to you.
Joy in living comes from having fine emotions, trusting them, giving them the freedom of a bird in the open. Joy in living can never be assumed as a pose, or put on from the outside as a mask. People who have this joy don not need to talk about it; they radiate it. They just live out their joy and let it splash its sunlight and glow into other lives as naturally as bird sings.
We can never get it by working for it directly. It comes, like happiness, to those who are aiming at something higher. It is a byproduct of great, simple living. The joy of living comes from what we put into living, not from what we seek to get from it.