The rain patters down around me, the pale grey sky’s salty tears cascading down around me like a bed sheet of invigorating moisture. The rain is cold, and it chills me to the bone, but the frosty temperature seems to jar me out of my monotonous sludge that once resembled thoughts. I came out here to escape the tapping of fingertips against keyboards, stuck in those cramped, grey cubicles even long after I’ve left the office. And now it’s raining, and I’m cold. I’m very cold, actually, my jaw aches from the violent chattering of my teeth as my body protests against my voluntary flirtatious behaviour with suddenly-alluring hypothermia.

I sit on a bench, a wooden bench just off the trail, listening to the soft sounds of the cloud tears percolating down into the grassy soil that surrounds my resting place. My head is tilted up, eyelashes beaded with moisture, as I gaze up at the perspiration rushing down at me. The water plips against my skin, gentle kisses delivered personally by the anguish of the skies themselves.

It doesn’t rain much here, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt the gentle caress of nature’s tears against my skin. I breathe in the crisp air, imagining the oxygen as it passes into my respiratory system, imagining my blood oxidizing, imagining the rapid cellular respiration currently ongoing, my entire body’s collection of skin and bone and blood and fat all working together to preserve the miracle of life, the miracle in which I am constantly experiencing.

It really does feel like a miracle now, enveloped and saturated by rainwater, surrounded by nature, feeling blood rush out to my limbs from every pump of my heart. I imagine the path of my blood through my heart, the way it twists and winds through the ventricles, and the arteries and veins, my whole body an interconnected web of wires and tubes that keep everything alive and spinning, a well oiled machine that knows no rest, so never wishes for it.

This moment, it’s this moment right now that makes it all worthwhile. Through all the pain and the work, through all the fear of strifes only in place because of our own human race, our own drive for expansion, for excellence, for perfection. Through all the doubts, and the wishing, and the wanting, and the needing. It’s right now, right here, this moment, this _feeling, _that makes everything feel like one big stairway up to the glorious pool of rejuvenation, so seldom visited but eternally cherished and pursued.

It’s the way I can feel my blood pumping through my veins, feel my heart beating, feel air flowing through my body, feel the struggle and the pain and the effort every part of me goes through every day just to wake up one more time. It’s the way I feel wholly connected by every individual part of me, the way I feel so perfectly at home in my own skin, my own body. I can feel the tightness of my skin, the cold water making my body shiver as it tries to produce and simultaneously preserve warmth, another system set in place to keep my heart beating once, twice, three times more. Infinitely more.

I sigh, exhaling all the carbon dioxide that my body needs to wash out, feeling all my worries and struggles and pain go out with it. I am here, in this moment.

In this moment, I am complete.

In this moment, I am at peace.

In this moment, just this moment, I am completely and truly alive.