Have you ever thought of how random life is? Not what happens during it, but how random life itself is.

There was once a time when you didn’t exist, when you were nothing. When time kept moving and the seasons kept changing, but you weren’t here to experience it. And then all of a sudden, one day you were. Just like that, you were here. You had a family and a home and love [hopefully], all these things that were never real to you before that moment.

A lot of the time I think of how “wrong” my life could have gone. How I could have been born blind and deaf [one of my worst fears]. How I could have been born in Yemen to a family who couldn’t afford to take care of me so I grew up in a decaying orphanage where I was never adopted and ended up living homeless on the streets. But I got lucky. I was, I am one of the lucky ones.

I don’t know if I ever deserved the life I was given. I’d like to believe I did, but like so many other things in life I think it was just luck.  By some chance I was born into a great family who tries so hard to give me everything possible. And I want to feel like I deserve this life everyday, to feel, to live like it wasn’t wasted on me.

I think many of us forget to do that, to be grateful. We think we’re entitled to have this life. Instead of appreciating the fact that we can see and hear and breathe and walk, we complain. I have too much homework; I’m so tired, my back hurts; I can’t afford this 300 dollar Michael Kors bag that I don’t need. We allow ourselves to get so consumed by our everyday lives that we forget that this is a gift.

Compared to everything in the universe we are so insignificant. The earth, the sun, even the couch I am sitting on as I write this will be here long after we’re gone. We don’t have as much time as we would like to think. Our time is so limited, and yet so many of us forget we are finite beings.

I’m only nineteen, but I know I don’t have that much time left. Yeah, I may have 65 or so more years left in me, but in the grand scheme of things that is not a lot of time.

So I take life in everyday. I think of how weird it is that the world is spinning and yet I feel so steady. Sometimes I just wiggle my fingers and think about how incredible the human body is, how strange and enigmatic it is. And yes, I have my moments when I complain about trivial things and that the world must hate me because things sometimes don’t seem to go my way, but then I remember. I make sure to stop and see the world around me, and think about how wonderful it is that I am here, and I get to be a part of it all.

I am temporary, but I’m learning how to become okay with that [mainly because I have to] because I am grateful that I got the chance to live, if only for a little while.