10 Little Things that Make Life Beautiful

I tried the 5 am club for a week. Mainly because I love a good challenge but also because I made a bet with my husband that whoever caves first is on dish duty for the rest of the week.

To make a long story short, after a rather sleep-less week, hubby won and I happily trotted on back to my normal schedule. My sweet, simple morning routine that has all the happy, little things I need to jumpstart my day.

Hmm. Well, all things besides one thing. A thing that I have genuinely missed since resigning from the early bird club. And that is, watching each day’s glorious sunrise.

Awaking while the world is only lit by moonlight and everything is effortlessly still. There’s something eerily thrilling about sitting out on the stoop with a steaming blonde roast watching night and day blend into one harmonious moment.

So the moral of the story is, no, the early wake-up didn’t give me the gloriously stoic traction over my life I had rosily envisioned. But I did gain something from sitting in the stillness of a 5 am sunrise.

The magic of catching a moment.

The infinity of a moment. They happen while we’re driving, while we’re eating, while we’re yapping on the phone. And we’ve all come to call them moments.

But I think we should call them miracles.

You see the thing is, miracle moments are around us all the time. In everything we see, we feel, we hear, we touch. But sometimes we just robotically move through the moments and forget to catch the miracle in them.

We forget how miraculous it is that we can pick up our phones and FaceTime our friends and family that literally live in different countries than us. It’s insane. It doesn’t make any logical sense that I’m eating my avocado toast and yapping away while watching my mom bake cookies through a little screen. It’s a MIRACLE.

The air conditioning unit (yep, the one I’m constantly grumbling about because it’s SO loud), is the only little box-shaped barrier between my sanity and passing out from heat exhaustion. I could rant, but you get the idea.

You have the ability to put a ‘catch the miracle’ lens onto anything and everything you want. Whenever you want! You have this handy-dandy mind tool that is so incredibly powerful and it’s totally free and easy to use.

It took a sleepy 5 am sunrise when my brain was literally incapable of doing anything besides silently gawking to begin to understand the illusive art of intentional living. And the coolest part? It had this boomerang effect of slowing me down throughout the rest of my day.

I found that when I consciously engaged with this ‘living in awe’ thing, there were a zillion sunrises around me all the time.

So here are 10 little miracles I caught in the art of slowing down:

1. The cramping pain of uncontrollable laughter

2. Humming along to a song I love that randomly came on at a café

3. That “Friday Feeling”

4. Noticing how every palm tree is so uniquely different

5. The golden hour light reflecting off a glass of ice water

6. Watching a group of cute and giddy kids do a DIY front lawn car wash

7. Picking out the most perfectly ripe peach from the fruit bowl

8. Reading a random Instagram post that deeply resonated

9. That little cloud of frothed creamer in my morning coffee

10. Finding an exciting new novel in a free little library

What are 10 little miracles hidden within things you already do or see or hear throughout your day?

About the Author: Shani Hecht weaves together pretty words at Shani’s Art Studio and attempts to live intentionally. Her only wish is to offer an honest promise of “I care” as she explores the unfolding of being a human.