Here is what I want from you. I want you to be grateful. I want you to get down on your knees every day and thank your lucky stars, or the lord above, or whatever hand leads for all you have in your life. I want you to thank the heavens if you have employment, I want you to thank them twice if it is a job you can even half enjoy. Have a lover? Thump your chest in gratitude? LOVE that lover, beat yourself prostrate just a little bit to reveal how exactly fortunate you are to have that lover who does the things that make life just a little bit brighter, the days shinier. A home, children, pets? I want to see callouses on those knees. I want to see the exhaustion of your gratitude, the blood of your debt.
And while I want our lives to be steeped in honesty, for your grievances to be heard and our hearts honest, I also want you to shut up. Just a bit. Just a little. Because every time you whine about your to do list, how HARD everything is, how much work the day takes, how much time your lover steals, you show me that you have not yet internalized a truth that will do you well to understand: we were not born to be happy, we were simply born to be. We exist to breed and we breed to exist. And then. More babies. A fortune, a biology. A divine plan? Perhaps, but the tools are given, and providence is up to you. You don't deserve happiness just because you are so rad. You earn happiness by being awesome.

So when you wake up and you see her lying beside you and she smiles and rolls over and brushes up against you I want you to smile. When the dogs asks to be fed I also want you to pet him. When your boss texts you I want you to jump just that high with a spring in your step. I am not asking you reduce your expectations, I am asking you to wake up to the ongoing fortune of having the luxury to ask for more.