Cherish your moments -- IRL

Do you know my friend Maria Popova? If you like to think, to be inspired, to use your imagination, to learn about poets, authors, scientists or great thinkers you once knew and have forgotten or maybe never studied, or simply to have your heart and mind gently moved, you should.

Full disclosure: I consider Maria a friend, but we have never met -- she has no idea who I am. What I am is a long-time supporter of her richly informative and inspired website, BrainPickings. I do not always agree with the authors she cites but that's what makes her site so stimulating. I strongly suggest you visit and want you to know you can sign up to get free emails weekly from her. If you like what you read, please consider a small monthly recurring donation. It can be as little as the equivalent of buying a friend a coffee just once a month. Maybe, like me, you'll grow to consider her a friend -- so, buy her a cuppa.

Here's what she wrote in a recent post that moved me deeply:

• For each of us, one thing is true: Had any one variable been ever so subtly different — had your parents mated on a different day or at a different altitude, had the early universe cooled a fraction of a second faster after the Big Bang, you would not exist as the particular constellation of atoms configuring the particular consciousness that makes you you. Because chance plays such dice with the universe, and because the die dictates that the vast majority of energy and matter never had the luck of cohering into this doomed delirium of aliveness, it is, in some profound and practical sense, a staggering privilege to die — one that betokens the privilege of having lived. To lament death, then, is to lament our luck, for any negation of the possibility of death is a negation of the improbable miracle of life, a wish for there to be nothing to do the dying — nothing to have partaken of the beautiful, bittersweet temporality of aliveness.

My take-away from this? We are all so lucky to be able to live our given lives. We are all living miracles of chance; taking that to heart, fully, it makes me happy that I am alive and that I've have had the chance to know all the people I love and have loved who also -- luckily for me -- live or have lived. Let us then be grateful for each breath. Let us be kind to our own hearts, to our selves. Let us recognize our own efforts and support our own strengths and strive to live up to them. Let us cherish each moment that we have been loved, reject any moment or person that would hurt us or do us harm or denigrate us in any way, and may we learn to leave them behind without malice and move on. Let us smell the roses and cherish our moments -- IRL and right in the actual moment.

Peace and love to you in the week ahead.