152 Reasons to Be Alive

#9: Blaring the lyrics of a song while driving alone in your car

Life is good, and often for very special, tiny, specific reasons. Here are mine.

1. The feeling of well-being after sport
2. The soft lips of the person you love against yours
3. The smell of pizza
4. The feeling of drinking water when you’re really thirsty
5. Taking off your shoes to put your feet in the sea
6. Reading a book so good that you come out of a trance two hours later
7. Laughing alone in public because you just thought of something funny, and having to bite your lips to keep from looking crazy
8. Coming home and being filled with a sense of satisfaction about the day you’ve just had
9. Blaring the lyrics of a song while driving alone in your car
10. Putting on your favorite underwear in the morning
11. Having lunch or dinner on the terrace
12. Going to your parents’ house
13. Hearing the song of the cicadas for the first time in the season
14. Waking up to the first rays of sunlight entering the room
15. Receiving good news
16. Going home, being alone, making yourself a good dinner, and eating it in front of your favorite TV show
17. Taking a nap after lunch (or why not after breakfast)
18. Picking up someone you love at the train station
19. Realizing that you look pretty good today
20. Walking out of the hair salon with a clean cut
21. The atmosphere of vacation departures
22. Waking up before dawn and realizing you can go back to sleep for a few hours
23. Experiencing mindfulness
24. The smell of coffee
25. Taking a cold shower in summer
26. Waking up and finding croissants on the breakfast table that someone who got up early went to get
27. Finishing work early and doing something nice in the late afternoon
28. Sunrises
29. Sunsets
30. Putting on something you feel comfortable and sexy in
31. The evening air cooling off after being hot all day in the summer
32. When Spotify randomly puts your three favorite songs in a row
33. When you’ve had a bad day and someone takes care of you at night
34. Massages
35. Feeling in harmony with yourself
36. Jumping for joy
37. Looking back and seeing how much you have evolved or gotten better on this or that point
38. Having a perfect night’s sleep
39. Laughing so hard you cry
40. Film photography
41. Having lunch at your grandmother’s house
42. Taking your grandmother to a restaurant for lunch
43. Eating comfort food without feeling guilty
44. Finding out that your efforts have paid off
45. Receiving an opportunity you’ve been dreaming of
46. Tasting a new dish
47. Getting a new tattoo
48. Dyeing your hair the color you’ve always wanted
49. Receiving a compliment, from a stranger or someone you love
50. Dancing like nobody’s watching
51. Feeling the naked body of the person you love against your own naked skin
52. Traveling alone
53. Traveling in good company
54. Spending quality time with your brother or sister
55. Meeting a friend for a drink after a long week at work
56. Realizing that you have a common passion with a friend, then practicing it together
57. Putting on sunscreen and forgetting a small spot, and realizing that the spot got sunburned, so thankfully you remembered to put sunscreen on the rest of your body
58. Finding out that the sauce in your lunch box has leaked, except that you’ve put a plastic bag around it so you thwarted the adversity
59. Putting on the first pair of shorts of the season
60. Christmas Eve
61. Realizing that the photo you just took is great, that it accurately captures the essence of a person, or that it freezes an action impossible to reproduce
62. The warm feeling of the sun on your skin
63. The feeling of fulfillment that you get at your favorite artists’ concert when you sing and dance and feel carried by the energy of the moment
64. The long walks alone, with or without music
65. Realizing how much your body does for you
66. Eating ice cream from a cone while walking by the sea
67. Receiving a letter
68. Spending time in a bookstore
69. Buying books
70. Seeing your meal arrive at the restaurant
71. Going to the funfair
72. Having accomplished something that was important to you
73. Making someone laugh
74. Feeling happy and grateful to be alive
75. Singing and hitting a certain note and being surprised at yourself
76. Taking up a hobby you haven’t done in years
77. Learning something new
78. Virgin piña coladas
79. Repeating the joke of the moment that keeps making your mom laugh
80. The sound of a soda can being opened
81. Successfully pranking someone
82. Ordering food at the drive-through and eating in your car in the fast-food parking lot with your significant other, music playing and windows open
83. Sitting on the sand of a quiet beach and looking at the sea, preferably at the end of the day
84. Looking at the stars and perceiving the immensity of the universe and the mystery of life
85. The beautiful plays of light
86. When your pet spontaneously climbs on you asking for love
87. The smell of a cake baking in the oven
88. When you arrive home and your partner or your mother or father has cooked your favorite dish
89. Surprises
90. Pancakes
91. Mixing two foods that don’t normally go together and finding out that it’s delicious
92. When you find a banknote in your pants pocket
93. When you’ve just finished cleaning and your house is spotless
94. When you cook a dish for the first time and it’s delicious
95. When you make eye contact at the bar with someone you think is cute
96. Arriving at a restaurant, saying you have a reservation, and discovering you got the best table
97. Surprising someone
98. Feeling loved
99. Going to bed on clean sheets
100. Eating a freshly picked fruit from the tree, delicious and warmed by the sun
101. Waking up without an alarm clock
102. The first vacation day
103. All other vacation days
104. Sleeping with a pillow in your arms
105. Melting marshmallows on a campfire
106. When your favorite song suddenly comes on the radio
107. Avocados
108. The sound of crickets at night
109. Catching that train you thought you’d miss
110. The smell of a bakery in France
111. Creating
112. When the waiter forgets something on your restaurant bill
113. When something you have longed for becomes a reality when you no longer believe in it
114. When someone says they are proud of you
115. When you feel proud of yourself
116. Stretching
117. Wrapping up in a blanket when it’s cold
118. The wind rushing through your clothes when you wear a light shirt
119. The sound of footsteps in the snow
120. A bowl of diced watermelon
121. Resting your head on a soft pillow
122. Losing the feeling of gravity when you are in the water
123. Feeling intensely alive
124. When you take the train or the plane and the seat next to you remains vacant
125. When you go shopping and the cashier gets the price wrong and you pay less than you should have
126. Recovering an old, pleasant habit
127. Feeling supported in times of great sorrow
128. The warmth of human contact
129. Opening a button on your pants when you have eaten too much
130. The smell of a perfume that suddenly brings back a memory
131. Lying in the grass when it’s a little cool
132. The smell of the forest
133. Reading by the fire
134. Drinking a hot chocolate
135. Being happy to go to work in the morning
136. Making a ladybug fly away from your fingertips
137. Making something with your hands
138. Eating raw cake dough
139. Biting into a juicy fruit
140. Waking up and feeling good
141. Making breakfast for a loved one before they get up
142. The first coffee of the morning
143. Drying off in a soft towel after a shower
144. Looking for shells on the beach
145. The feeling of being comfortably full
146. Seeing fireflies
147. Taking off your bra when you get home
148. The cool breeze that comes into your house in the summer when you open all the windows
149. Doing a good deed
150. Putting your feet in new, soft socks
151. Seeing a rainbow
152. Eating cereal in milk and having it stay crunchy

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