Lucky to Be Alive

Have you ever heard in a movie (I know, it's disturbing how much our life experience and knowledge is based on stuff we saw on TV), or maybe even in real life, something along the lines of, "Oh my God! Do you know what would have happened if we had just stayed in that building for two more seconds? It would've exploded with us in it! We're lucky to be alive!" or maybe, "So-and-So has cancer, so every breath, every single day counts, really."

Which is funny, because who ISN'T lucky to be alive? Whether you managed to be the only survivor of a drowning ship or simply came home after work, you're lucky to be alive. There are a billion things that could go wrong each day and end up with you dead or hurt. The few things that do go wrong could get out of hand, again resulting with you getting hurt or worse. So, really, we're all lucky to be alive. Every single breath each of us takes counts, whether we have a life-threatening disease or not.

I guess why we think this way is because all these life-threatening diseases and situations put things into perspective for us. It all comes down to thinking, "I could have been dead by now." What we fail to realize is that every single one of us could have been dead at any given time of day. Which is why, car-accident-survivor or not, we should all thank God to be alive. Not only that, we should all make something of our lives. Just being happy and doing something useful or helpful on a day basis is enough. I know we all have our "blue funks" (yes, I did just say that), but we shouldn't keep dwelling on things. At the risk of repeating a cliche (and I'm saying this especially to myself), we should enjoy every moment, seek every opportunity, climb every mountain...you get the picture.

It seems that we've gotten so used to living that we don't even see the miracle in it anymore. But once we do, once we come to terms with the idea that this moment could be our very last, we might actually start living, as ironic as that sounds.