This Pedestrian Life

I’m sitting at a coffee shop.

Not the kind that you find everywhere, like a Starbucks,

and not the super eclectic ones you find in really hipster places.

And I’ve been sitting outside, writing a note, and reading a book, and letting the wind blow my hair and Indian-looking skirt around.

And it’s one of those days when I just want to soak up every moment. 

It’s one of those days when your soul feels like its swelling beneath your chest and could burst at any moment. 

It’s one of those days when life looks and feels so beautiful that you panic because there’s no way you could soak it all in.

It’s one of those days when you’re conscious of how fast moments slip past, and of how enthralling laughter is, and how incredible it is that there is life.

People are beautiful.

And yet everyone I have seen walk up has insecurities written all over them, over every inch of skin.

It makes me sad. There are too few people who recognize that life, that the earth, that the people in their lives are beautiful things.

These are the days I recommit to loving people radically, to never letting a day go by that I don’t appreciate the people and the laughter in my life, to wear crazy colors and let the wind blow my hair in my face and my skirt around my legs.

And anyone who walks past me,

sitting here, outside the not-so-ordinary-but-not-extraordinary coffee shop,

would never really guess that I feel like exploding into a crazy firecracker of life and color.

Or that I’m watching the way their downcast faces show the weariness of life,

but also the significant potential of life.

“This pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience.”

- Shauna Niequist