Renewal.

There's something that the very wise and very profound Jason Mraz said in a blog post a while back. He said something about how you have to look through the eyes of a hypothetical tourist - always seeing something as though it's for the first time. It keeps life interesting and keeps you in gratitude for being where you are at that particular moment in time. It keeps you IN that particular moment in time, period. Things look new. Things are exciting. Things are worthy of attention. There's no skimming through a town, letting the scenery around you blur into an obscure oblivion. You are there, and no where else.

It was such a simple, yet powerful suggestion for me. I've kept it in the back of my mind since I read it however many months ago. But it wasn't until recently that I started trying to put it into practice.

Every time I come home, I try to notice something different about my house, or my street, or my neighborhood. At least one thing, every time. Some of the thoughts I've had over the past few days have been the way the hedges by the kitchen window never really grow in quite right, or the hole that still remains from when my first dog, Freckles, ripped the soil out of the ground (I was about three at the time), or the little web a spider made on the lamp post by the driveway, or the way the houses around me have changed and morphed over time. And I try to make them insignificant things -- the types of things I would be looking for if I were in an alien place.

I've been trying to do it at work, too. I noticed the clicking of the doors as they open and close, the particular smell of computers and ipods and air conditioning that I remember from when I walked in for my first day back in September, the sound my Converse no-lace-ups make on the hardwood floor, the beeping of locker combinations and restricted-access rooms' key pads, sounds of laughter and of frustration, the random pictures that are scattered around.

Jason Mraz was onto something when he suggested this. Not only am I ever mindful in every moment that comes my way, I am grateful for every single one of them. Even the frustrating ones. Even the ones where my brain fizzles, and I swear I am on my last bit of hope for the human race. I am still grateful because I am still here. I am breathing. I can smile and I can love and I can laugh and I can hug.

I am alive.

Are you?

- May (you not only walk a mile in a stranger's shoes, but live a lifetime through his eyes).