It is so beautiful to me to live in this body, to be in this life. Sometimes when I’m going about my day in a haze, just going through the motions, I have a moment where it feels like a veil lifts. And I’m filled with a sense of awe at the world around me. And I feel grateful to be a spirit having this human experience. I would say these moments are fleeting and rare, but they happen every day, all the time. I’ll walk to class and notice all the other people, all different in shape and size and color, outfitted in suits or pencil skirts or sweatpants, all with their own rich inner lives. I’ll see a mother holding her child’s hand, or an old couple walking down the street. And I will feel so deeply connected to them even though we’ve never met. A man walking past me, with fresh flowers in his hand. Someone resting their hand on someone’s shoulder. The curve of a smile. Arms filled with grocery bags. Someone talking on the phone in another language. I see these people, these strangers, and I think about the joy they all carry. The joy that comes from mundane things like the sun filtering through the window onto your cheek. The waterglass, cold and sweating. The tickle of citrus as you peel an orange and let it melt on your tongue. The sound of live music, jazz, filtering in from the street. Cookies baking in the oven. Long swims in the ocean, letting the waves hold and caress you. And I think about the sadness we all share too, the endless grief. Friends you don’t talk to anymore. Places you can never go back to. Memories fading despite our best efforts to hold on. Memories that have soured and curdled with time. I think about Black bodies, and the ways we hold the trauma that has been passed down to us. Our softness and  sensitivity. Our resilience. Our pasts, our present, our futures. My mom tenderly combing my kinky hair in the bathtub. Headwraps and waistbeads. Smile lines and ashy knees. And I think about the people closest to me. That I try to celebrate, in all their humanity. Cooking together, laughing as we cut up tomatoes, cucumbers, onions. Dinners over bottles of wine. Dancing with swaying hips, bodies close together. And holding each other through the hard times. Conversations with thick voices, calls on days where you feel sad and small and your movements are slow, like molasses. These people mean so much to me. The ones I’ll never see again, and the ones I see every Sunday. We’re all just passing through. When the veil lifts all of us are connected by tiny little strings, made of a substance I don’t have a name for, the stuff of life that makes us human. I see it. I see it all the time.