A suffocating and humbling reminder comes with the concept of space and time—there is a universe, a planet, an ocean, a country, a state, a lake, a city, and a building before there is you. 

Your world is bigger.

Bigger than a blue knit sweater, stained with soil and drops of frustrated tears, are tall mounds of dirt and grass and animals and insects. Mountains I’m sure if you stood on, a victorious feeling of brave freedom would consume all the negative emotions your body holds. You can climb a mountain if you want to. 

A crooked line of pen ruining a perfect page of writing can diminish in comparison to the squid. He wades calmly in the ocean, not worrying about where his ink goes. In water, ink holds no permanence—it washes away. The ink and the squid are not permanently bound. You are not defined by a crooked line.

Even a red, anxious embarrassment does not burn as ferociously as the lava that coats a volcano. Although the energy of pain and eruption feels similar, your anguish contaminates only what you allow, while a volcano has no choice in what it destructs. You are allowed to hold the magma only in your two hands.

But remember, your world is bigger. 

There is a reason waterfalls talk so loudly; they’re trying to say something important. They have unwaveringly powered ecosystems for an unrecorded amount of time—through the evils of ice and dams and curving rivers they have kept pushing—they remain unintimidated by the threat of challenge. 

And when a plant says it will survive, and then does, it’s not because it could, it’s because it needed to. Whether to feed the deer or spread the seeds, or simply to feel what it’s like to photosynthesize, the plant did what it had to do, no matter how small its influence may have seemed.

And if bees defy all odds by flying, and if penguins can fall in love forever, and if shrimp see colors that humans couldn’t even imagine, and if plants are alive, and if the earth, a floating, one-in-a-million rock, exists somehow, then you’ll be fine.

The world is tearing its vocal cords—listen.

At any moment, the sun’s fire could blind our permanence, but it doesn’t. So, each day you are presented with the choice of living in guilt and fear or in gratitude. And if the sun, and its trees, and its mountains, and its ice, and its oceans are choosing to let you stay, there must be a reason to be grateful. 

It’s easy to let yourself drown in the pebbles, but while you’re drowning, let the penguins, magma, squids, and mountains lift you. And when they do you’ll see that your world is bigger.