This week has been an extremely pivotal time period in my life and I will never think about things the same. It was a time of self-discovery and philosophical realization, and my whole understanding of the world around me and my own life has completely changed. It all started on Monday morning when I went to get a breakfast sandwich.

Had you asked me a week ago what the most important things in life are, I would've been quick to respond. Obviously, the most important things are wealth, success, and education. With wealth, you can buy anything and everything you'd ever want. With success, you get all the recognition you could need to satisfy your ego and to feel important. Education is what helps you earn success and usually wealth as well.

My understanding of my life changed on that dreary Monday morning. I woke up at 8:30 like usual, and at exactly 9:07 I left my dorm like I usually do. I do this because I like to head to the Pub, where they offer pre-made breakfast sandwiches every morning. It's extremely efficient to be able to just grab a breakfast sandwich and an iced coffee and head to class where I can enjoy my breakfast with ease.

I never realized how much those breakfast sandwiches meant to me until I got to the Pub and they didn't have any. Confused, I looked around. No one else seemed to care or even notice, but my soul was crushed. Why weren't there any breakfast sandwiches? What was I to do? This small inconvenience completely ruined my usual morning cheer, and of course due to my extremely stubborn personality, I could not possibly just get a bagel or some other form of breakfast. I needed that breakfast sandwich.

As I sat in my geology class with an empty stomach and a bad attitude, I realized how odd it was that my breakfast sandwich affected me that much. I usually think of myself as an extremely strong person who is able to undergo anything and make it through, yet this breakfast sandwich was the cause of my breaking point.

It made me realize how the small things actually tend to affect you more than the "bigger" things. I drink water religiously; I usually drink about twice the recommended eight glasses every day. As I was filling up my water bottle, I realized that while although I could live without wealth, success, and education, I could not live without my beloved water; obviously physically, but mentally as well, because it brings me so much joy.

As I was walking to the gym with a spring in my step, because working out is my favorite part of the day, I realized how lucky I am to have a body that allows me to work out.

I'm lucky to have a body at all, really. There are seven billion people in the world, and somehow, somewhere, my parents met by chance. I'm lucky they took a leap of faith with each other, and I'm lucky they worked through the hard parts of life and continued to love each other no matter what happened. I'm lucky they decided to have kids, and I'm lucky that I was created because of them.

Really, I'm lucky my parents were created too under the same circumstances by my grandparents, and their parents, and so forth. If you think about the insane amount of odds that were overcome that led to you being born, you realize there were generations and generations of chance and luck that led to your birth.

This leads to how lucky we are that the Earth was even formed in the first place and that it became habitable for life forms so long ago. What if the Earth hadn't been formed? We'd be nothing.

So while I do care about money, success, and education and about other things that are "bigger" in life, I realized how much the really small things really do matter. The things that affect us on a daily basis have a huge impact on our life as a whole, and the opportunities that we even have based on luck and chance are extremely life-altering. When you think about life for what it really is, you realize all the incredibly amazing things you take for granted on a daily basis.

So, I guess the real moral of the story is: you should have a breakfast sandwich tomorrow morning.