Dear _____,

There are some days where I wake up and I don’t know what to do with myself. I wake up and I don’t even know what to make of myself. There are nights where I can’t sleep and I suddenly hyper-fixate on my body, lying in bed, the steady sound of my heartbeat droning on in my ears, the air rushing into my nose with each breath sounding something like a steady stream. I am there in the dead of night, staring at the life I live as if it’s a dream. I wake up the next morning, always yet also never surprised to hear every noise that accompanies the rising sun. The birds chirping, the slow sounds of traffic starting… again, my own being. The day begins once more and here I still am.

I think it’s very easy to anticipate tomorrow. We mostly live mundane lives – yet I know that can be an enormous privilege compared to some. There are hundreds of millions of people who aren’t used to the feeling of tomorrow, who aren’t used to the guarantee of it as they go to sleep. Some even expect to never see it again, depending on their situations. But whether tomorrow comes or not, we all experience this sensation of being, of existing, within a moment, within our lives.

For those who anticipate their tomorrows, we experience this simple act of living again and again throughout our lives, and then it becomes old news. It’s very easy for this to happen as simply existing becomes routine. But then there are the moments when we’re cognizant of it again – sometimes in the strangest of ways. Sometimes we feel it after great tragedy or distress, or maybe we saw the sky from a different angle that day. Suddenly, we are aware of us being here. And that can be a very sobering reminder.

Perhaps what I’ve described is foreign to you, merely a list of words trailing off to rummage around your thoughts for a bit. Maybe you feel this too, the act of living, as if it surrounds you like water. I don’t know, I’m not you. What I do know is that no matter who or where you are, what you feel is yours to hold and live with. It is both a gift and a curse and we live our lives with this weight, sometimes lighter than air and other times crushing us under its pressure. It’s made of the highs and lows, the good and the bad, the many nuances. It changes so often that it’s hard to sometimes remember one moment from the next. Until we’re lying awake at night or just waking up in the morning, aware of every breath, pulse, thought that makes us up, that reminds us – here we are.

Regardless of whether this makes any sense, I’m reminded of a quote I heard from a podcast from fifteen years ago… I’ll leave you with it now:

“Jesus, there are lots of little funny things, I can’t even remember half of them. That’s what happens to a life, though, isn’t it? The little ornate things drizzle away, like cakes in rain, while the big blocky stuff is left to stand in for a lifetime of minutiae. It is sad and it is beautiful.”

– Graham Leggat, 2011

Originally written 09-07-2025

Accompanying music: Panoramic Feelings (Piano Version) by LudoWic