These past few months have not been my best. My depression hit me full force, family life got a bit rough, my now ex-fiance had to end things between us, I developed an apathy towards academic work, spent a week in Pine Rest Mental Health Services’ in-patient care program. After everything was said and done I decided to take a semester off from school, spend some time with family, and ended up taking a job that has put me up in a hotel in Portland, Oregon for the past three weeks, I have a week left here.

I have learned one thing from all of this.

I love life so damn much.

It’s messy and broken and tough and raw and real. In the blink of an eye your entire life can be turned on it’s head, and that is beautiful.

In the same chunk of time I’ve backpacked Yosemite Falls with my brother, made two good friends and have been helping them through some really rough times in their lives, lived in a new city, helped a kid find and catch his puppy Agapae. I’ve read, written, cried, went on long quiet walks, spent dark contemplative nights in a hotel, I got a tattoo.

But most of the time I’ve been living full-moment-to-moment life.

There is a feeling to it. Being. Focusing on every raw emotion that passes through your body before it flies off into the ether. The highs and the lows are what makeup life and they inform each other. One cannot exist without the other, and they are both worth living in. Thinking about the end ruins the moment. The light at the end of the tunnel diminishes the dark times that are specifically there to be painful, just as focusing on the ways a good thing can fall apart will ultimately ruin the experience. The future is wide open and mysterious and I’ve chosen to let it stay that way. Right now there is so much beautiful pain to be felt. There is so much life to be lived and skipping the hard parts would make the highs so much less.

I’m not telling you to tear your life apart so that you can get in some dark days. And I’m not saying that the hard times are a good thing to go through. Nor am I diminishing anyone’s pain. I think the point is that I’m not really saying anything except take a moment. Look around and take account of your life. Are you happy? Are you sad? Do you feel fulfilled and whole? Or empty and broken? Let yourself be those things. Take a breath, watch a sunrise, this is your life are you living it. Are you here, or are you on autopilot? Are you experiencing the life that is passing you by? Because it moves and keeps on moving and we have such a short time to feel the sensation of that movement.

What I’m going through, what you’re going through, good and bad shall pass.

I’m in no hurry. Life is a stroll, a meandering walk through the hills. Take it in.