Views from Raven's Nest: Daily Reminder # 339

I get an email from something called Heron Dance that I almost never open, but am too lazy to go and ask them to take me off their list. This morning, for some reason, I decided to open the message up and lo and behold there were a couple of lovely quotes about gratitude and life that I thought that would be a good thing for today's reminder. I particularly like the first quote.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. - Melody Beattie

Why can't I go outside? It looks so wonderful....

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

Even more astounding is our statistical improbability in physical terms. The normal, predictable state of matter throughout the universe is randomness, a relaxed sort of equilibrium, with atoms and their particles scattered around in an amorphous muddle. We, in brilliant contrast, are completely organized structures, squirming with information at every covalent bond. We make our living by catching electrons at the moment of their excitement by solar photons, swiping the energy released at the instant of each jump and storing it up in intricate loops for ourselves. We violate probability, by our nature. To be able to do this systemically, and in such wild varieties of form, from viruses to whales, is extremely unlikely; to have sustained the effort successfully for the several billion years of our existence, without drifting back into randomness, was nearly a mathematical impossibility. - Lewis Thomas, The Lives Of A Cell

Some things I'm grateful for today: (Items in red are pre-gratitude, my attempt to seduce the Universe into bringing me good things. I especially want the truckload of money so I can do all the other things myself and help other people as well. Really. Any time would be great, Universe. Tomorrow would be good. Next week. Sooner is better than later.)