Oh, you lovely people.

I see you, every day, online and offline. I see you writing books and planting gardens and taking care of children. I see you painting murals and inking comics. You are playing the guitar or a piano. You are taking a ballet class, or learning to tango. You are making breakfast.

You are doing it with hope and grace, and faith in things we don’t know to be true: that tomorrow will come, that the things you are doing are worthwhile. What you are doing is both elegant and ordinary, because the ordinary is, when done well, true elegance. And it is extraordinary, because any act of creation is extraordinary. It shows a love of life.

Meanwhile, I see terrible things. Bombs in parks where children are playing. Planes going down filled with teachers and doctors and electricians. With people who a moment ago were watching a romantic comedy.

And yet you are still teaching and doctoring and installing electrical systems. You are still planning and planting parks. You are still making romantic comedies, because love is inherently funny.

I see you and you see each other: all of us, all over the world, doing the work that matters. The work of creation.

I see your spring flowers, and the cakes you baked that didn’t quite turn out right. I see your new outfits. You are celebrating, because you are alive, and that in itself is cause for celebration. You are seeing the world, and it is beautiful, and you are doing your best to save it, whether you are trying to change laws, or sending money to organizations, or lifting a caterpillar off the sidewalk.

And you are noticing it, seeing the world, which is another way for nature to admire herself, because aren’t we her eyes? And aren’t we here in part to see her, to admire her beauty? We are her mirrors. We show her the hawk swooping between city buildings, the cherry blossoms in bloom. Ducks sliding across the water, willows bending like cathedral arches.

You are participating in a great dance.

You are a thread in the most magnificent tapestry ever woven.

You are a note in the song the universe is singing.

You are lovely, and this is what I was thinking as I watched you, all of you, simply being yourselves.