Tag: miracle

Treating Every Day as a Gift

“While it does no good to dwell endlessly on our own mortality and ponder how long we get to have our existence on this planet, we should take heed each day when we wake up in the morning and when we lie down at night just how special it is to be alive and breathing.”

Recent events in my life have reminded me just how fragile and precious life itself is to me. As you get older and the years start to speed up rather than slow down, you start to realize more and more just how fast time flies and how fleeting life can be. While it can be easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day routines and the busyness of what we have in our own schedules, there’s no denying that we only have so long to live, and we should remember that we are not going to be around forever. It does no good to dwell endlessly on our own mortality and ponder how long we get to have our existence on this planet. We should take heed each day when we wake up in the morning and when we lie down at night just how special it is to be alive and breathing.

Our mere existence at miraculous odds through multiple generations of ancestors who came before us is a clear reminder how miraculous it is to have the gift of life. It can be easy to lose perspective on how the state of being alive rather than the opposite is so special, unique, and wonderful that we can take it for granted. Even when life inevitably throws its challenges, obstacles, and setbacks at you, it is important to slow down, take a deep breath, and remember that this too shall pass, and that having life is always worth the struggles and suffering involved.

I believe that instead of getting caught up in going through the motions, checking all the boxes, and waiting for the next day to begin, try to take a minute or even a few minutes to reflect on the fact that you are in the here and now, reading this article, being able to breathe, eat, drink, and be part of humanity as so many who have come before you. Life is a miracle when you really think about it, and you only have one life to live. Make peace with the fact that life is not forever, our bodies are mortal, and what we should not let trivialities, gossip, and regrets swallow us up as we live and breathe.

Remember to make peace and share love with those closest to you because they such as yourself are mortal too and will not be around forever. Try not to hold grudges, feed off your resentments, dwell endlessly on what’s past in your life. You should try as much as you can to be present in the moment, appreciate what blessings life has given you, and enjoy the beauty and wonder of what living in this world means. We all know that life isn’t perfect and that many days in our lives are a struggle where we might be treading water unsure of where we’re headed, what the meaning of it all is, and how can live a life that others will remember.

Try not to dwell on those questions endlessly but rather strive to be the best person you can be. If you’re a brother, be a better brother. If you’re a mother or a father, be a better parent to your child or children. If you’ve done wrong, atone for what you did and seek forgiveness from others. You can never truly right past wrongs, but you can strive to be better in your life from there on out. Be willing to tell your family and your friends that you care and love them if they have been there for you as much as you have been there for them. Life is precious and fleeting not only for us as the narrative of our own journey through this world but also for those others we love and cherish who we share our precious life with.

Treating every day as a gift even when life is hard will make you more appreciative, grateful, and reflective on what truly matters during our existence. We do not know when our time will come to say goodbye to this world so you should always strive to live true to who you are and to leave this world better than you found it. I encourage you to take a moment or two before you get out of bed or fall asleep to reflect on what life you have led so far.

If you are content with your life and have made the most of it, you are on your way to building a fulfilling canvas that will be bright, colorful, and detailed. If you are not content with how life has gone, think about what joys you’ve had so far, how life could be more fulfilling, and what you can do to improve upon it as it is never too late to make our one life the best it can be. Do not get discouraged by mortality and that our existence may be finite.

Take comfort in knowing that your life, however small it may seem in the grand scheme of our universe, influenced those around you and that the world was changed by your place in it. You may not be remembered a thousand years from now after you’re gone, but you will always know deep down inside what kind of life you led while you were here, in its good and bad times, joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains. Hopefully, you may be able to rest in eternal peace knowing that the life you had lived, regardless of its days, months, years, or even a century or more, it was worth the gift of life itself.  

Anatomy of a Scene – Miracle Ceasefire

How we as humanity cling to hope is our investment into the future that better and brighter days are ahead as long as we persevere, push forward, and leave our world a little bit better for the next generation. ‘Children of Men’ is great because it poses the answer to the question of how does humanity hope for a future when no babies are being born?

The world without hearing children’s voices, laughter, and even cries can be a dark and hopeless place. That central message of the now classic movie ‘Children of Men’ (2006) has stayed with me especially in the current times of a pandemic that we are living in. How we as humanity cling to hope is our investment into the future that better and brighter days are ahead as long as we persevere, push forward, and leave our world a little bit better for the next generation. ‘Children of Men’ is great because it poses the answer to the question of how does humanity hope for a future when no babies are being born?

When you think deeply about it, humanity is restored generation after generation thanks to our youth, their ideas, their drive, their desire to not repeat the mistakes of the past and to learn from history. When you take humanity’s future away, what is there left to fight and live for? It is a powerful premise and one for which I am glad Director Alfonso Cuaron decided to focus on. His movie does not pull any punches and shows humanity at its worst when women are no longer able to have children.

Without children, playgrounds and swing sets remain empty. Refugees and immigrants are persecuted and forced into detention camps, suicide pills are common place, environmental degradation is the norm rather than an obscenity, and violent factions fight it out with the government in a post-apocalyptic United Kingdom where suicide bombings are an increasingly common occurrence as Theo (Clive Owen) discovers when he is almost the victim of one in one of the earliest scenes. Perhaps the most frightening part of the whole movie is that no one has figured out why women can’t have babies anymore and the novel that the film is based on is also clear when it shies away from saying why men can’t help in the reproduction process anymore.

In ‘Children of Men’, no child has been born for 18 years and it can be hard to retain hope after that long that things will change. The world is in a downward spiral and things get worse as the youngest person alive, Diego, is killed by an angry crowd. Theo takes solace in the fact that he has a good job at the government ministry and has a funny friend who goes by the name Jasper. Still, you can tell that Theo has lost faith in humanity especially after the death of his infant son due to a flu pandemic and his estranged relationship with Julian, his wife. However, when Julian tells Theo about Kee, a pregnant African woman, who may be carrying the first baby in almost two decades, everything changes, and Theo finds his purpose again to live and to fight for a tomorrow. Theo dedicates himself to protecting Kee and her future baby and wants to get her to safety, which means getting her to the Human Project, a group of the world’s best scientists discussing how best to make humans fertile again.

Theo’s journey with Kee involves getting her out of a refugee camp, escaping men who want to keep Kee’s baby for political purposes and who are also armed combatants, and avoiding fascist police forces who intend to get in their way. To escape the escalating urban violence around them as both the government and rebels fight it out in bombed out Bexhill, Theo and Kee take shelter in a refugee settlement in a former apartment building. The three of them come close to being killed and the baby’s cries echo throughout the building much to the stunned shock, joy, and awe it inspires among the refugees, the rebel forces, and the government troops.

The way the cinematographer follows Kee’s baby and Kee around in a wide tracking shot is absolutely beautiful making it one of the most memorable scenes in cinema history. “How is she?”, Theo asks Kee. “Annoyed.” Kee replies. A refugee woman reaches out her hand to touch the baby and another woman sings a sweet song in her native language. Prayers and aspirations are given to the baby as Theo and Kee walk through the crowd. The rebel soldiers acknowledge the baby as they get away from the advancing troops behind them. The government’s military soldiers are in absolute shock as one soldiers’ yell at his army unit: “Ceasefire! Ceasefire!” All of them stop shooting at once and look upon Kee’s baby in disbelief, many of them never having seen a human child before in person.

To see the armed men in tanks and heavy weapons and their technological mastery stop, think, and realize how humanity and its future must be preserved and let free without being in danger. Not much can stop a war from continuing but a baby’s cries can most certainly pause it for a few minutes as this brilliant scene exemplifies. An immediate symbol of hope for humanity and its possible redemption is realized in its newest addition and it is a wonderful allegory to how despite our differences, any human around the world will stop to comfort, aid, and protect for a baby as we would do for our own children or grandchildren or even nieces and nephews.

Those men who don’t see the baby continue to fire at each other in the distance but any soldier, man, or woman who hears the baby crying lowers their weapon, pays their respect, and let Theo and Kee have safe passage as they represent a glimpse of hope finally for humanity’s future rather than its eventual extinction. Some of the soldiers pray to their God and others peer in to get a look at the baby with their own eyes but all are silent and in disbelief thinking that finally there might be hope again.

After a minute or two of calm and as Kee and Theo are about to get away, a rocket RPG hits the government soldiers and the men ignore the baby again and get back to fighting the rebel forces in the building that Kee and Theo just left. To me, that is a tragic symbol of how once we have something out of sight and out of mind, we go back to fighting each other instead of uniting around a common cause. As that RPG fires, I think to myself watching this scene how somebody always has to ruin it for everybody else. Unfortunately, Kee’s baby does not lead right away to world peace and a cessation of arms. However, it is enough time for the two of them to escape and have a fighting chance of reaching the Human Project.

A baby’s cries are more powerful and everlasting than any weapon, any political cause, and any division between humanity. While human nature cannot be totally pacified by children and babies being born, it allows us to fight for better days and for a future freer of pain, sorrow, and tragedy.

I hope that when you watch this scene, you’ll realize that even in our current age when fertility is not extinct and is not a present issue that we are still fighting to preserve hope for the next generation and generations to come. Whether it is preventing pandemics, stemming the worst effects of climate change, or preventing nuclear war between nations, we all have a responsibility to be stewards like Theo in protecting the babies of the future against any manmade harm that could befall them due to our own neglect and ignorance.

Please do watch this ‘Miracle Ceasefire’ scene and the rest of ‘Children of Men’ when you have the chance. It is an excellent film to see and this scene may be the best one of the entire film. Hope and redemption are only as strong as our ability to have a better future.