Feel to the very end,
the triumph of being alive.
(The Seventh Seal)[1]
I stand outside on one of those perfectly beautiful days, feeling the breeze on my face and on my arms. I look at the swaying trees and grasses around me, and at the sun and clouds in the sky above. I am filled with a sense of perfection and awe. What’s amazing to me is that the wonder-filled beauty of the world is not a dream.
Life is precious, but we often don’t think of it that way or treat it that way. Sure, few of us want to die, but we don’t usually carry with us a deep appreciation of just how precious our daily gift of life really is. We take it for granted, because we have always had it. It has always been with us and we have never known a time without it.
In reality, life—especially human life—is the most rare and precious of privileges. Each day alive should be its own source of wonder for us. Each moment that we get to breathe, be aware and appreciate is another golden drop of ambrosia to which we rarely do justice. As writer Tal Ben-Shahar notes, “The stars, the trees, the animals are, in fact, a mystifying phenomenon, a miracle. The fact that we write, that we see, that we feel and think—that we are—is a miracle.” [2] One needn’t be religious or believe in a god to feel gratitude to the universe for this miracle, for this one chance to witness existence.
I look up at the starry sky
With moon abright and clouds floating by.
Stopped in my tracks, I think to myself
“Oh, that? It’s just another miracle.”
I’m still there for a few moments more,
Then I move on my way.
(EVR)
Life, to borrow a term from H.G. Wells, is a “wonder glimpse.”[3] As Richard Dawkins reminds us, “After sleeping through a hundred million centuries, we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades, we must close our eyes again.”[4]
This privilege of ours will not last forever. We will one day re-enter an eternity of being dead and of not being conscious of anything. Life is a rare, precious and delimited gift that, as Gordon Livingston has noted, is a “flicker of consciousness between two great silences.”[5] It’s a gift that should be taken advantage of while we have it—that should be lived and appreciated as fully as possible before its rareness is taken from us forever.
Many of us seem filled with angst in life. This is understandable, as life can be stressful, and, to some, can even seem absurd. When we ponder, however, the invaluable and delimited giftness of each moment that we have (and that we have had), and when we remember that our gift of life is a limited-time offer, we are able to appreciate the time we do have and to view our everyday stresses as a bit less overwhelming.
Every day above ground is a good day.
(EVR)
To learn more about Life Savor’s philosophy,
read Life Savor: Treasuring Our Gift of Life by Erik Victor Reed.
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- Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal. (1957; Criterion, 1999). DVD. ↑
- Tal Ben-Shahar, The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life. (Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill Contemporary Learning, 2009), 223. ↑
- H.G. Wells, “The Door in The Wall” in The Door In The Wall And Other Stories (The Floating Press, 2011), 16. ↑
- Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 6. ↑
- Gordon Livingston, M.D. Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now. (New York: Marlowe & Co., 2004), 86. ↑
