One day as a child you woke up to the awareness and consciousness of yourself as an individual human being – that you have a body, that you breathe, your heart beats, you can move and speak and think and act with free will. You realized that you seem to be separate from those around you.

You spent some years early on learning how to master and live in your body. Perhaps it was an adjustment for your spirit, learning to live within the limitations of the physical world.

Somehow beyond your conscious awareness, you spirit ended up inhabiting a body at this time in the history of our planet. You ended up in this place. It was no accident!

You as an individual may not yet know the larger meaning of your own life or how it fits in with the larger patterns and connections between events and peoples and living creatures, the land and oceans, the big picture of life on Earth.

Know this: The web of life is the big picture, the universal pattern composed of infinite smaller patterns and connections that interweave, interact, and overlap with each other creating an achingly beautiful tapestry of the whole.

Even if you consciously did not choose this particular life or the conditions of your life, you have been blessed with a span of years to live.

You have been given the opportunity to experience joy and laughter, to know grief and heartache, to heal from grief and heartache, to seek and maintain connection with others, to learn about love, to experience growing older, to become a grandparent one day perhaps, to develop your talents, to do those things that satisfy your soul.

All that you do with kindness and good intentions blesses and strengthens the web of life.

Think of your life as a gift – the greatest gift you did not ask for. You are here now, so make the most of it!