target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">About the Author
by Kristine Carlson
Coauthor of the Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all Small Stuff series. Author of From Heartbreak to Wholeness: The Hero’s Journey to Joy and Heartbroken Open: A Memoir Through Loss to Self-Discovery.
We can all attest to the fact that life gives us our
challenges; I’ve never met another human being to say otherwise. Yet, there’s one thing I know for certain, and that is that when we can be present to the small joys and see the ordinary as extraordinary—that’s when we are able to keep life in perspective and, amidst those darker days, know that there is a well-lighted path, albeit in breadcrumbs sometimes, to lead the way out of the valley.
Glad to Be Human points the way to having a love affair with your life. Irene O’Garden notices the nuances and aptly shows us her musings through the eyes of gladness.
I love the simplicity of the word “glad.”
“Glad” is joy in a softer melody.
It is contentment sprinkled with happiness like a vanilla cupcake with pink frosting—glad is the pink frosting.
“Glad” is that feeling you have when your infant stops suckling your breast and returns to sweet slumber after the 2 a.m. feeding.
“Glad” is witnessing something in nature that is a miracle every time it happens—a sunrise and sunset.
Yes, indeed, Irene O’Garden has inspired gladness throughout this masterpiece of creativity.
There are profound lessons in this book, too. Irene shows us the lesson in her poetic depiction of all that seems so ordinary—she brings the simplest concept to life and allows us to be curious about all things.
Glad to Be Human will inspire you to live your most vibrant life—and to keep it all in perspective as you take in these extraordinary passages. It is having a great love affair with life that makes everything livable.
I hope a smile comes over you as you enjoy this book as much as I did and arrive at the same conclusion as me—I am, indeed, “glad to be human.”
Welcome, dear Reader.
Isn’t reading wondrous? Words appear before us and, like the faces of dear old friends, we can’t help recognizing them. So it is with feeling glad to be human. We all recognize that wordless, joyous whoosh.
I wrote this book to remind myself—and you—how often that shapeshifting grace arises. It spirals in simple moments as we repot our plants, tackle creative projects, or tenderly hang an heirloom ornament. It spreads as we explore other cultures down the street or over the sea. It suffuses us when we witness or perform acts of beauty in the face of our common sorrows.
Our five senses, our fantastic curiosity, our exhilarating emotional capacity are just a few of our avenues to gladness. Even when headlines clamor, or life deals tough challenges, we can find numberless reasons to feel grateful and hopeful.
We humans love to discern and create patterns. It’s my hope that this book inspires you to recognize what makes you glad to be human, again and again, weaving and sharing your own brocade of joy.
Irene O’Garden
Why is it even important to be glad to be human? We may be the only species that questions gladness.
This fuchsia-tinted Alstroemeria at my side has no second thoughts about gladly and extravagantly expressing herself.
If cells weren’t glad to be cells, could they metabolize? Could they have the little cellular barnraisings that lead to the creation of petals or peanuts or pineal glands?
If atoms were ashamed of being atoms, could they even join atomic hands to make a cell for a while? They’d skip the dance and stay home. No whirling around tonight, honey. I’m just not up to making a cell. Why bother anyway? I’m not that great at doing it, and after all, cells only die, so why even make one?
Humans cannot comprehend the larger body we compose, though we can feel its organs in a symphony orchestra, a sports team, a school, a hospital, a movie set. These larger selves need us to function just as we need the beings who compose our bodies. There is great joy when these larger bodies function well, because functioning well is the nature of Nature. Of course, any cell, plant or animal will tell you the purpose of life is not function, but joy. Just ask my flamboyant Alstroemeria.
This coursing sense of connected well-being, or gladness, is the default setting of each living creature, and doubtless, the inanimates as well. (If it’s all spinning particles, is anything really inanimate?) The holographic fractal beauty of physical reality is that gladness is important to each, and each is important to all.
Hear Earth purr.
Broken crocodiles. Lizard tails. Altogether reptilian. Antediluvian. Elephant skin. Spiral. Wrinkle. Shatter. Blackened tortoiseshell. In the varying terrain of this wide petrified flow in Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park, I like what lava has written.
Blasting sun above, rippled umber underfoot. Ninety degrees. On our way to Pu’u Loa, a petroglyph site, my husband and I hike baked lava trail, sanded by eight hundred short years of footfalls.
Eagerly we go.
Writing always has her challenges. For twenty-first century writers, challenges are mostly internal: psychological or time-based. Our ancestors must create both surfaces and implements before they even start to record experience.
We pick up a notebook, open a glowing screen. They slay animals, cure skins; pulp plants, layer and dry their tissues. We buy a marker, a ballpoint. They hunt and excavate pigments; gather and soak oak galls for ink; find flight feathers, cut quills. We speak a memo to a phone. They journey with smelly torches deep into caves; hike barefoot, waterless, over adamant lava fields to a place sanctified by intention.
We crumple in our tracks. We doubt the worth of our experience. We thirst for faith in personal impulse. We shame ourselves with distraction, forget what can be sanctified.
Forty thirsty minutes later, my husband and I arrive at “The Hill of Long Life,” a rise in the
