By faith,

There's nothing special about my life or what I do. I have little ambition to rule the world, or to have my name carved into the history books for an eon or more. My perspective is often quite disproportionate to the real impact I have on this world, because it is in our nature to be self-focused.

Life is too often taken for granted. Just because so many have shared it, it seems of less value taken as a whole, and each individual seems to have such insignificant impact that one would think it wholly negligible.

The fact of the matter is, life is a subscription, a serial storytelling event. Think of your favorite book, or tv series. Each flip of the page brought new intrigue, building upon the previous, connecting a line of interest that, though finite, seems to endure long after the book is done. Being in the moment, we may not see it for what it is. It is a most personal gift to each of us, something that we alone possess, for better or worse, but always and forever to remain exclusively ours. Yes, sometimes our moments involve interaction, but still the experience, the essence of what we see, hear, feel, think, belongs just to ourselves. It is our perspective that makes each and every mundane moment in our pitiful lives unique and exhilerating.

I've been through enough, as I am certain so many of us here have likewise, that I know so long as I am taking breath, I have the opportunity to continue the experience of this most wonderous gift. From the hospital gurney, to the running for your life, to the birth of my children, to the death of my dearest friends and family, nothing about any of it is particularly different from what millions of others have gone through, and will continue to go through. What is different is how I choose to evaluate the experience; to process it, to recall it over and over, with all it's thrills, terror, and joy.

Having gone through what I think are enough extremes in life now to be able to sit afterwards and really contemplate what happened, it's occurred to me that, while there is a definite contrast between the ability to recall extreme moments from the less eventful, if I focus well enough, I can still remember a lot of really mundane times as well. The next big leap, then is to realize that each of those moments has the same time-weighted value, and I have only a finite number, so then those that are to come, regardless of their intensity, all have value. Once spent, they are gone, so exchanging moments in time for memories is the economy of my life.

Happiness, therefore, in any given moment depends almost entirely on how I choose to value each one. For better or worse, each moment spends roughly the same, so if I am to get the highest yield from the commodity of my life, then I should treasure each moment. I should invest into it my greatest interest, even for those that are idle, those that are thoroughly disgusting, those that are full of rage, fear, or bliss.

I am reminded of the end of the movie "American Beauty", after Kevin Spacey's character is killed off, where he comments about having nothing but gratitude for every single moment of his stupid little life.

It really doesn't matter so much what you do, where you go, who you are with. In the end, it is all about whether you choose to value the moment, or not.