By Jill MacGregor

I miss eating snow. I do not miss living in a cold, frozen clime—but I do miss taking a mittenful of snow and eating it—without caring if it was dirty. Without thinking of bird poo, bus exhaust, acid rain, blah, blah, blah. It was a wonderful experience to eat snow.

Is knowledge interfering with your sense of wonder or accelerating it? Remember when you were a child? You were still gathering facts on your world and everyday was a mass of new information. And because there were some gaps in the information, magical things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy could exist easily.

You were told that believing in something was a huge part of making it so. Your belief became the power that kept Santa’s sled airborne. Your belief became an active part of this very special, unexplainable thing.

Now, that’s what I call buy in.

But things can change as we get older. Sometimes our sense of wonder is replaced with pessimism. Sometimes the surprise comes from things actually working out—we lost the assumption that, of course, things would turn out as we wanted. We forgot about the importance of our believing in things and the power behind that belief.

We need to get that back.

Expect more wonderful, please

I’m going to let you in on a little secret—you are entitled to good and wonderful. You don’t even need a reason—you just need to require it.

We live in a world where you get what you give—so by all means, give what you need to complete the action. Are you finding yourself surprised when things in your life turn out to be good—or the far more superlative, gud? Hmmm.

You deserve the good things, you know.

Obvious Miracles

Shake off your dark mantle—you are one lucky bastard, in case you need reminding. Here’s a short list of the everyday miracles in your life.

ONE First and foremost, the biggest miracle in your life is that people love you. And you can feel it when they do. YOU CAN FEEL IT. Let’s face it, there is nothing more miraculous than feeling all the love that people have for you. It makes you strong. It makes you understand that anything is possible.

TWO You have this tiny engine in your soul that’s purpose is to develop solutions that will make your life better—and the lives of others. This little engine of yours is powered by a need for balance and it’s constantly recalibrating and removing the negative and replacing it with the positive. Listen—it’s doing it right now…I bet you weren’t even aware. chug chugga chug

THREE You are constantly growing and healing. You are all about taking lemons and making lemonade—possibly adding a little vodka and just having a party. You are asked to take a sad song and make it better on a regular basis—that’s not always an easy task, but you are up for it. Your capacity for growing and healing is limitless.

FOUR You have so many choices. Choices on how to act in difficult situations, how to treat others, what to say to comfort others, whether to focus on the negative or the positive—the list is endless. What you focus on will multiply, so choose the good stuff.

FIVE Life offers you countless safety nets in the form of friends and family– and even the surprising stranger or two. Life also provides you with endless pieces of luck in the form of happy accidents, parking places that appear from nowhere, the extra $20 in the pocket of your rarely worn jeans, the lost piece of gumption that rises to the surface just when you need it, the call from a loved one that lifts you up…I could go on and on.

You can only receive when your arms are open wide.

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By Jill MacGregor

When I walk outside, dinosaurs don’t chase me. I don’t see danger at every turn. My fight or flight response rarely if ever has good cause to kick in.

Except when I am saving everyone’s life in my head. I do it a lot.

You’re welcome. Just doing my job.

What could I possibly be talking about? It’s like this. In my head, on a very regular basis, I have smack down every home invader, scare the shit out of every mugger and protected myself and everyone I love from danger.

It’s sort of a volunteer position.

Until recently, I thought it was one of those things we all did—like talking to yourself or replaying the day’s events until they played more favorabley.

Is this wasted energy or preparation? Only time will tell because I do inadvertently store all my scenarios away. Not for review but for just in case. Card catalog of defensive maneuvers and crushing comebacks… complete with bat shit crazy facial expressions and gestures so every fictional attacker understands that I have nothing to lose, I’ve been waiting for trouble…for the myriad of dangerous situations in which I find myself…alright, ,in my head.

I am not a negative person. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I am an optimist which makes me feel like Pollyanna, bonnet tied under my chin, understanding that my fall from the tree will bring the town together.

But, honestly, we live in a world full of miracles. Children unburied in Haiti. Peace when everything points to potential chaos. Saying yes instead of saying no.

We created this phrase: near miss. It describes all the good things that rationally shouldn’t have happened but did.

Maybe that’s just our version of a miracle.

In fact, we’ve created an entire lexicon all so we don’t have to say miracles. I think it might embarrass us or feel too Old Testament…

Narrow escape. Incredulous. Unexpected. Lucky Duck. To be in awe of. And then, out of nowhere. When I least expected it.

All miracles.

Love. Friendship. Forgiveness. Cured (always past tense). Belief.

All of those positive things that happen in a way we can’t quite explain…miracles. Doesn’t always have to involve Olympic hockey or rising from the dead to be miraculous.

I could leave my crime fighting behind me. The world may not need me to take care of it after all.

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