Viva la Vida

("Viva la Vida" is a Spanish expression that means "Enjoy life" or "Hurray for life" and also the name of a Coldplay album).

I had a fantastic day today! And in fact, nothing unexpected, grand or surprising happened.

It just so happened that I remembered looking at my life in a less usual way.

It just so happened that I remembered to give due consideration to the little things of a normal day.

Nothing happened that had not happened in previous days.

I noticed the sunrise through the clouds, which resulted in a memorable picture that, given the opportunity to have been painted by one of the great Masters, it would certainly be immortalized! And I had this show before my eyes. The sun bothered to give us that show, and at that moment I remembered all the other days, because of the daily rush and worry, I did not even bother to look to see if it was there.

I looked around, and just like me in the previous days, everyone passed by in their bustle, without noticing the wonderful sight they were missing.

I immediately remembered the blind man I saw yesterday in the subway, and thought of how he was denied this privilege. And how many others in the whole world cannot enjoy the simple wonder of a sunset, or the wonder that may be to look out to the sea and see the fantastic and marvelling shades of blue and green.

And I went down to the beach, took off my shoes, and walked barefooted on the beach to experience the pleasure of feeling the wet sand in every step that I took, to hear the surf of the waves near me, to feel their splash on my face, to stop to enjoy the moment and continued walking. And I realized the other privilege it is to be able to do this, to have the freedom and the capacity to do it. How many people cannot do it, because they are paralyzed by some unfortunate accident, because they were born that way, or because their age no longer allows them...

We are filled with privileges in our life, in our day to day life, and we stubbornly think only of what we do not have, or what have yet to achieve, or simply forget that we have a world around us to feel.

We do not think of the privilege of having a father and a mother who loved us unconditionally and sacrificed for us, when many others did not even know their father and mother.

The privilege of having brothers and sisters, as no matter how much quarrelling there is, they will always be there when all the others are gone.

The privilege it is to have friends that never fail to support you when you need them. And even the greatest privilege that it is to be there to support them when they are those who need us.

The privilege of having a person next to us, who despite our faults, accepts us as we are, who know how to value our qualities too.

The privilege it is to have a child and to know that we can help raising that little being and offer, perhaps (if we have the wisdom to do so), the right "tools" that one day will be helpful to possibly change this world for the best. The truth is that someone already has been the father of a Ghandi, a Mother Teresa, a Mandela or so many other souls whose example has left its mark in improving humanity.

The almost divine privilege of being able to laugh of plain happiness, to be able to share a loud and genuine laugh with someone.

How many people have already lost their will to laugh, and how many have no one to share a laugh with?

It is true that if we had a lot of money, we would have some more commodities than we have, but the truth is that the ability to be happy has nothing to do with it. It depends and will always depend solely on us.

This summer I went to the Azores, and when I was walking on the western slope of the island of Flores I lived a privileged moment: A common bird, a blackbird, landed on a tree beside me and began to sing. And as I saw it, I sat quietly on a roadside rock. It was a fantastic and beautiful song that I did not know possible for blackbirds and that continued for a really long time. The probability of this happening was small, and the probability of me noticing it was even less; but for some reason it happened and I had a pleasure as great or even greater than if I was comfortably seated in the best "Concert Hall" listening to the best philharmonic orchestra ... and I was actually just sitting on a stone, under a tree, watching a simple and common blackbird sing.

Our ability to be happy goes a long way, if we remember the privileges that we have in every moment of our life and knowing how to take advantage of them. And if we can remember those around us of that, even better.
Happiness or unhappiness depends only on the point of view with which we choose to look at life and everything around us.

"Viva la Vida"