"The Awe in the In-Between" by Jeremy Dieck

When I was 2 and a half years old I was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis and they told my mother that I wouldn't live past the age of 9. Today, I am 36. I'm 8 years into a double lung transplant, I'm an amateur boxer, I have been to 9 countries, I've met countless wonderful human beings from all over the world, and I have been lucky enough to be on the receiving end of more exceptional, life changing moments than I can count.

But that's not what this blog is about. It's easy to feel a sense of awe when you are sitting by the canals of Amsterdam with a group of people you just met hours ago but swiftly became lifelong friends. It's not hard to feel like life is worth living when you're standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower, gazing across the city of Paris and taking in the majesty. In times like this, you don't even have to look. The awe finds you.

However, life is not made up of these moments. Life is made up of the quiet spaces in between. Waiting in line at the grocery store, sneaking in a few minutes of reading before going to bed, conversations with a barista you might never see again. These are the moments where it becomes a challenge to find the awe. After all, what is so awesome about standing in line and waiting?

Cystic Fibrosis did not teach me these lessons. I didn’t wake up one day with lung function under 20%, struggling to breathe even with oxygen flowing, and say to myself, “Wow, this is really awesome.” I learned these lessons in spite of my diagnosis. Because the truth is, the illness fought me every step of the way. The months when I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in the hospital during the same stay, the days when I couldn't join my friends on a night out because I felt terrible, the times I coughed up tablespoons of thick, sticky mucus — those moments told me to give up. They told me to accept my fate, live quietly, die young. 

But I refused. I pushed myself through those whispers and I yelled back "No, I won't. I refuse." I taught myself to find the awe that exists all around me. What's awesome about standing in the grocery store line? Everything. Just the fact that I can stand. Every single day brought me breath. Even when that breath struggled to come out, I still found awe in the fact that I was alive.

The best part? This ability is not unique to me. The illness didn't grant me a superpower. In fact, it granted me the opposite: an obstacle I constantly had to overcome. And that’s the real beautiful thing. Illness or not, the beauty is there. The awe can be found in each and every single day. You simply have to be mindful and learn to open your eyes and find it. 

So the next time you find yourself in a long line, look for the awe. Is the sun shining? Awesome. Is there laughter around you? Awesome. Can you breathe? That is freaking awesome. The awe is all around us, everywhere. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is just breathe and remember to look.