I am profoundly grateful today for the gift of life and the opportunity to observe. How extraordinary and beautiful this all is. When we consider how miraculous it is that we are here at all, even the difficulty and pain are exquisite.

If I think about my life, it is utterly amazing that I have survived this long and have had such a wealth of experiences—a cornucopia of the good, the bad and the ugly. Perhaps the greatest gift of growing older is to appreciate ALL of it, the marvelous and the horrible, the grief and the bliss.

I don’t think I believe in an intelligent ‘Creator’ (in the sense of a ‘Let-there-be-Light kind of Deity’), but it sure makes me wonder when I stand back and think about how human beings have evolved and the richness of our creative force.

With gratitude comes humility and profound awe at just being present at this party called Life. I marvel at all of the grandeur and pomp on one hand and at all the suffering and despair on the other. I wonder if I have much to say at the end of the day that others haven’t said before better than I. My gift may be like that of a sand artist: to communicate what I see to others and to consciously release my creations into the next moment of ‘Now’. Perhaps this is another lesson in ‘letting go’… and an opportunity to realize there are as many artists as there are audiences to communicate with, and that every one is as ‘valid’ and ‘worthy of expression’ and ‘needful of seeing’ as the rest.

I am also exquisitely close to the reality of love today: unconditional love that includes all feelings, all thoughts, and all circumstances and that generates the space for ‘other’ and me to just BE.