tiny revelations

Today when I was walking to the Union to drop off some mail and eat before class I got hit with a big gust of wind and I realized all of the sudden that I am alive. This might seem a little obvious, but it's also something that I've forgotten somehow. I had forgotten how wonderful bodies are, that I somehow start a signal in my brain, which travels down my spinal cord to my legs and tells them to move, that my lungs breathe air, that my heart beats. Then there's the fact that we have the capability to learn, and to create. The fact that humanity can create music, art, literature, philosophy, architecture. Remembering that floors me in a way that reminds me of how I felt about god when I was younger, which now I realize was not so much feelings of joy about god, but joy in being alive.
After my little revelation this morning, I was trying to think back in my childhood to the first moment I remember being alive. The first moment that I was self-aware of my existence. I haven't remembered it yet, and I don't know if I ever will. Either way, it's good to think about. I've remembered a lot of little events in childhood I didn't remember before. Like laying on the hill behind our house in Illinois looking at constellations and feeling vertigo, like I could go spinning off into space.
This evening I was walking across campus and realized again how amazing it is that the gravitational pull of the earth keeps the moon in orbit, and causes the waxing and waning of moon, and that the moon causes tides, and that the earth orbits the sun, and that our solar system orbits in our galaxy, which is speeding through the universe. Crazy.