Where Did All of This Come From?

There is little doubt that our greatest joy in life comes from just being here. Experiencing what we are doing. Where we are. Who we are with. What we have.

Today's blog came this morning while I was making coffee. It was the focus of what we have. In this case, brown sugar, to be exact.

After removing the lid from the sugar bowl, I peered inside and felt something mixed between gratitude and awareness. "That is so fascinating that I have this sugar for my coffee," I thought.

The sugar is not from here. I pictured a cane field thousands of miles away and began to wonder just what it took to have deposited it here in my kitchen. That one thought started my looking around the room wondering how this all got here.

• The granite for our countertop made its way into our kitchen from India.
• The coffee was from Venezuela.
• The spoon to stir it made its way here from England.
• My coffee cup from China.
• The basket of oranges were hanging on trees in Florida a week ago.
• The hardwood floor I stood on made the journey from Brazil.
• The Pokémon picture sitting on my son's little blue craft table began as a thought in the mind of an artist in Japan.

It is truly astounding when you stop for a moment and realize just how much has been deposited into our lives from the winds of the world. Everything we need to build a business, feed a family, be amused, or just sit at the breakfast table sipping a coffee that somehow magically appeared from halfway around the world.  

Here is what I think all of this means: With everything we have at our fingertips, there are no excuses. With all the world has deposited on our doorstep, there is absolutely no reason why in a free society, with an available market of millions or billions of people, why we can't carve out any dreams or hope or vision from all that is here for us.

We don't lack the ability or skill or intelligence to become anything we can imagine in life. If you ever doubt what's possible for a moment, look around and ask, "Where did all this come from?"

Have an excellent day.