Miracles

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

— Often attributed to Albert Einstein

I’ve been thinking about this quote today.

And then I realised something.

Maybe there is no either/or.

Maybe the choice isn’t between believing that nothing is a miracle or believing that everything is.

Maybe everything actually is a miracle — and the difference is simply whether we are awake enough to notice.

Think about it.

The fact that you woke up this morning.

That your heart has been beating without you asking it to.

That you can breathe.

That sunlight can travel millions of kilometres through space and arrive on your face.

That a human being can look into another human being’s eyes and somehow feel understood.

That we can love someone.

Lose someone.

Heal.

Begin again.

We become so accustomed to these things that they stop feeling extraordinary.

And perhaps that’s one of the strangest things about being human.

We get used to miracles.

The ocean becomes just the ocean.

A sunset becomes something we photograph and immediately scroll past.

A conversation becomes ordinary.

Our body becomes something we criticise rather than something we marvel at.

Being alive becomes the background to our lives.

Until something happens that reminds us how fragile all of it is.

A loss.

An illness.

A breakup.

An accident.

A moment when you suddenly realise:

I don’t know how long I get to experience any of this.

And suddenly the ordinary becomes extraordinary again.

The coffee in your hand.

The person sitting across from you.

The ability to walk outside.

The sound of the rain.

The feeling of the sun on your skin.

Nothing necessarily changed.

Your perception changed.

Maybe that’s what we’re really talking about when we talk about a miracle.

Not something supernatural.

Something we have stopped seeing.

Life doesn’t necessarily need to become more extraordinary.

Perhaps we simply need to become more present to the extraordinary that is already here.

Because when you really look at it, existence itself is almost impossible to comprehend.

And yet here we are.

Breathing.

Thinking.

Loving.

Experiencing.

Wondering.

Alive.

So perhaps there aren’t two ways to live.

Perhaps there is only one.

To be awake enough to see what has been in front of you all along.

Everything is a miracle.

We just forget.