"But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played." -- Alan WattsSometimes as we strive for happiness, in the items we acquire, the money we make, the pleasures we seek, we forget that the purpose of life is "not to get but to receive."And again, not to receive stuff, but to receive experiences, interaction with others, "to be or not to be" in the moment. To wonder at the experience of life, and whatever it brings.
For me, it's nature and space that grounds me. To be in awe of the painting book of colors in a sunset, to marvel at the view of a golden sunrise over a volcano, to wonder at the burst of light from a star 92 million miles away, to look up at the sky at night and realize you are on a piece of rock hurtling and spinning through space, and to watch the time-lapse photography of the Milky Way as our Starship Earth travels through the Cosmos. That's when I realize that our time alive is a miracle, precious and fantastical. That is a moment of awareness, of being awake to your existence and not asleep the in the daily grind of living and dying, the journey between the nursery and the crematorium.
I remember being amused at the concept of saving the planet, as the planet has been here for billions of years and will be here for billions more. It's actually more about saving ourselves. If we destroy the biosphere that supports us (and many other life forms), it will be us that perishes, and not the planet. And the amazing thing about life is that it finds a way, and life will continue on this planet as it has done after other mass extinct events, and will return perhaps without the humans that destroyed things the last time around. Life exists even in our biosphere in very inhospitable areas where we cannot.
On a cosmic level, our species has existed but for the blink of an eye. We cannot do anything but be in the now. For us as individuals, it is all about the experience!
