‘Head Space’: On miracles
By Independent columnist Brandon W. Hahn
This is going to sound cheesy, but there’s a lyric from an 80s song that follows me around.
“In this world we’re just beginning to understand the miracle of living.”
That’s Belinda Carlisle from “Heaven is a Place on Earth.”
And you know what? Belinda might have been onto something.
We talk about the miracle of childbirth or pray for miracles when something has gone terribly wrong. But what about the miracle of just being here?
Waking up. Making coffee. Going to work. Coming home. Laughing at something stupid. Getting another day to try again. Maybe that’s the miracle.
There’s another song that follows me around: Leonard Cohen’s “Waiting for the Miracle.”
I love the idea because I think we spend a lot of our lives doing exactly that. Waiting.
Waiting for the money. The job. The relationship. The diagnosis to change. The big break. The universe to finally tap us on the shoulder and say: “Okay, your turn.”
Meanwhile, the miracle has been sitting under our noses while we work and wait for that pay cheque. We’re alive.
I know that can sound painfully simplistic when life is genuinely hard. Poverty, grief, illness, hunger and loneliness aren’t solved by somebody telling you to “look on the bright side.” Sometimes life absolutely kicks the living stuffing out of us.
But even then, I like believing there is still something to learn, something to notice and maybe something worth sticking around to see.
Stop feeling like you’ve been excluded from all the good stuff. Your time can still come.
Work hard. Play hard. Rest without guilt. And show up. Especially show up.
I don’t think heaven has to be exclusively a destination. Why can’t there be little slices of heaven scattered throughout an ordinary Tuesday?
A great cup of coffee. Your favourite song arriving at exactly the right time. A dog losing its mind because you came home. Getting all the green lights. Extra pickles on your burger.
Miracles don’t always need thunderbolts and angels. Sometimes they’re wearing sweatpants.
We’re surrounded by these tiny things and somehow trained ourselves to look past them while waiting for something enormous.
I do it, too. I get angry about choices I’ve made. I replay things. I wonder whether I’m doing enough with my life. But I try to take something from those moments and keep moving.
Celebrating life doesn’t have to mean a 2:30 a.m. “rager” fuelled by Red Bull, vodka and Jägermeister, either.
Sometimes celebrating life is sitting in your La-Z-Boy watching “Pop Culture Jeopardy.”
You woke up today. You’re here.
Do your best. Work from bed if you have to. Laugh when you can. Rest when you need to. Forgive yourself for not having the entire universe figured out.
Maybe Cohen was right to wait for the miracle. I just think Belinda Carlisle found it first.
The miracle is living.
And look at that. You’re already doing it.
Brandon W. Hahn is a podcaster, screenwriter and mental health advocate. He hosts Snackable Mental Health on YouTube and writes about the strange business of being human.
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