"Life is what happens to youwhile you're busy making other plans."

-Lennon

I wake up in a cloud of linen. I feel the way the fabric clings to my sleepy skin as the morning light drips in through the windows. The birds are wrapping up their daily choir as the Douglas Fir prepares itself for another day of sipping sunlight through it’s needles. Clouds cling lazily from the sky, as the world spins slowly into Wednesday. The small happenings are here.

I pick up my phone and wonder. Seventeen notifications, three text messages, and a missed call all from the time I fell asleep. This has become a routine that I, along with so much of the modern world now share. What would happen if we fell asleep and woke up alone, with silence?

I have developed a ritual of spending the first half-hour of my morning with myself. I’m not one to give advice, but if I were to suggest anything, this precious period of stillness and solitude does wonders for the reboot of the mind. Its not fancy. I don’t have the skillset for meditation (yet?) rather, it simply involves waking up and letting the day wash into me, instead of rushing into the day. I scan my body, wiggle my toes, stretch, sigh and notice what thoughts are passing through my head. Often I find myself pre-occupied with conversations from the night before, or running through a mental checklist of what I need to accomplish today and how. But every now and again, I’ll find myself simply happy for another chance to walk through the world.

Waking up, each and every day, is a miracle. The fact that our bodies can carry on breathing, beating, and moving our blood through our veins while we sleep is incredible. We can break down the science of our anatomies to reach an understanding of the intricacies that we walk around in, or we can accept that its a massive blessing to be able to wake up each day. Period.

I’m not personally religious. I do not need a God to give me direction in my every day. I do think it is important to find what works for each of us, and to allow where we find meaning to hold sway. I find mine in the excitement of wearing flip-flops after winter. In the smiles poured into my morning coffee. In the food that a loved one places on my plate. In the way the whole earth seems to be rejoicing in green at the coming of spring.

Others may find theirs in understanding computer code, or singing in Sanskrit, or reading complex literature, or swimming really fast in a chlorinated pool. It doesn’t matter what we do. What matters is our ability to let the things we love hold sway. By doing this, we create space and time for these things. Less becomes more and our meaning increases exponentially. We connect with our passions to connect with ourselves to connect with the idea that every person is a walking sack of passion and potential that is separate, and yet the same as ourselves.

While it would be convenient to have a list of how to live a good, ethical, meaningful life that we could follow like a road map… the fact that there isn’t one liberates us. Our job as humans is to create our own maps that weave within the framework of the communities, landscapes, and people we interact with on a daily basis. Most importantly though, we must play as if our life depends on it and witness the life happening around us.