The rain fell onto the glass panel above me, each drop holding a myriad of secrets self-contained in its own little world. Sometimes I wonder if we are like the rain, each of us a drop in the larger ocean...each drop unique and beautiful, but ultimately insignificant? Or do the actions we make today shake the world in a much more profound way, reverberating through the chronicles of history like the legends of old?

I find beauty in the chaos of nature, the structured system of disorder. We so often try to have "complete" control of our environment, our life, of everything around us. We can't relinquish that control or else we feel powerless; but the truth of the matter is that the control is merely an illusion. Can we make a single hair on our head black or white, as God so rhetorically asks us? Can we make it rain just by hoping for it? Of course not. But the ocean has lasted, and will last, for ages after I am gone. It will last through the maelstroms and the rains, the changing seasons and the tides. The forests will grow and burn, then grow again. The very foundation of the mountains will erode one day to dust, while new mountains are being born. Those great changes of which I have no control, does this make me feel insignificant? It does not.

What I have realized is that each life is a precious gift. Our time here is but a short visit, one to be enjoyed and the return home to be expectantly and joyfully looked forward to. We are not to worry about our life or our death, but we should simply be and enjoy it, make it easier and better for others around us. Stop and smell the roses. Take the scenic route. All those old cliches about just slowing down and enjoying life, except they are all so true. When was the last time you simply lay outside at night and gazed at the stars, watched as the clouds flirted across the sky, obscuring the moon behind their silvery veil? Listened to the sounds of the birds at night as the sun gently slipped down behind the horizon, the touch of night spreading across the land as the shadows grew longer and the stars one by one took their stage in the sky?

So when the time comes for me to leave this world, I will not feel as though I have lost my life, my control over the things around me. My life may not seem like much when compared to the rise and fall of nations, may not be measured by the great sweeping calendar of nature--but like the butterfly's wing, it will have made ripples of kindness and charity across the world, making it better for generations to come simply by having been, and loved and lived. And I will smile with the quiet knowledge that I am going back home to friends and family, enjoying one last sunset as the light of my eyes close into the blissful, tranquil night of sleep.