The Gift You Almost Missed by Someone Who Has Begun to Look for Miracles

The morning whispers that get carried into the waking hours. It isn’t loud, and it doesn’t make a fuss. It curls up beside us under the covers, uninvited but familiar, and murmurs something like, “Ugh… here we go again.”

You don’t say it out loud. You probably wouldn’t admit it’s there. But it is—like a thread pulled tight beneath your ribs before your feet even touch the floor. Before coffee. Before the world has asked anything of you. A quiet, resigned mantra that rises like fog from the marrow: I don’t want to do this anymore.

And maybe you think it’s normal. I did. I thought I was just being honest. The day would pass like it always had—routine tea, routine chores, routine quiet dread of whatever work had to be done. Then I’d blink and find myself back in bed again, the hours devoured by autopilot. I’d watch a show I wasn’t really watching. I’d hope for sleep I didn’t feel I’d earned. All the while, something inside me was whispering, There has to be more.

But I didn’t notice. Not for a long time.

Then, one morning, I did. I caught the thought in the act of forming—this gray, tired thing that landed in my mind like a weight. And it startled me. Not because it was new, but because I realized it had never been new. It had always been there, like a rusted hinge I never got around to oiling.

I paid attention. Not just that day, but the day after, and the day after that. I began to hear how quietly brutal my own mind had become. Not vicious, no. Not the kind of voice that screams or scolds. Just… weary. Hollowed out by repetition and the belief that nothing would change.

And I thought: what if something could?

So, the next morning, instead of bracing myself for disappointment, I asked a question. What if something good happens today? Just that. A small, almost naïve prayer. And then I watched.

It wasn’t long before I saw it. A child in the grocery store grinning at me with a single dimple and a face full of ice cream. A bird that landed near my car door like it had been sent as a reminder. A flower so bright and absurd in its perfection that I laughed out loud in the parking lot. Nothing grand. Nothing that would make the news. But everything that would make a life.

And it hasn’t stopped. I still wake with that old whisper sometimes—my bones remember it. But now there’s another voice, too. One that says, Look for it. There’s a gift waiting for you.

The funny thing is, I don’t think these small miracles ever left. I just wasn’t looking. I didn’t believe they belonged to me. Or maybe I didn’t think I deserved them unless something big changed first—my job, my body, my purpose, my love life. We put conditions on happiness like tolls on a highway. But joy doesn’t charge admission. It shows up in the quietest corners.

And still, we miss it.

Why? Why do we hold our breath through life, waiting for weekends or something dramatic enough to jolt us awake? It’s not because we’re broken. It’s because we’ve been living by the rules of the body, not the soul. Our human nature tells us to guard, to brace, to expect the worst. It’s been trained that way by long winters, bad news, broken hearts.

But there’s another nature—quieter, older, hidden under the surface like spring under snow. That nature knows that miracles aren’t rare. They’re just rarely noticed. That part of us whispers not, “Here we go again,” but “Look closer.”

I’ve started to believe this with my whole chest: if someone told you there was a treasure hidden in every single day of your life—and all you had to do was search for it—you’d start your mornings differently.

And if you did?

You’d find it

Every time.

Hari Om Tat Sat