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Surely it says something about the state of our world that so many of us find ourselves on a constant search for reminders of what is awesome about life. Why should it be so difficult to remember that things are awesome? Most of us have physically comfortable lives. When we say "I'm so sick" we mean that we have a cold, not, like, cholera. When we say "there is nothing to eat" we mean that we have to invent some weird dish from the potatoes, couscous, and ketchup that we found in the pantry, or else work up the energy to go to the store. This morning I said, "I have nothing to wear!" I didn't mean, "My last burlap rag has disintegrated and so I must freeze nakedly in an alley." I meant, "I didn't shave my legs but oh well I'll wear this skirt."

So, yes, things are pretty awesome. We get to be alive. We get to live in structures designed for living. Most of us even get to pick out stuff we like to surround ourselves with. We get to go do things. There are such things as free days at museums, libraries full of books, parks anyone can enjoy, machines that give you a big shiny sticker for a quarter. AWESOME!

But in case you are having one of those blah-days, or one of those blah-months, or blah-lives, when it's for some reason difficult to remember that things are indeed awesome, there is 1000 Awesome Things. Well, there was anyway. The blog, which has been counting down from 1,000 (Broccoflower) since 2008,  has recently reached #1. Luckily there is a book version, and another book version, and yet another book version on the way. I did say we all needed these reminders, didn't I?

But of all the awesome things Neil Pasricha has reminded us to be in awe of, be sure to check out #2: Remembering how lucky we are to be here right now. He breaks it down: "You are the most modern, brightest spark of years and years and years of survivors who all had to meet each other in order to eventually make you. Your nineteenth century Grandma met your nineteenth century Grandpa down at the candle-making shoppe. She liked his muttonchops and he thought she looked cute churning butter." Awesome. He breaks it down even further: "On this planet Earth, the only one in the giant dark blackness where anything can live, we ended up being humans. Congratulations, us!" Seriously, awesome. Have you ever watched a slug slugging around a garden? They don't even get to drink coffee!

And what follows is the best reminder of all, the reminder we should all remember at least once a day: "You only get a hundred years to enjoy it." And that's if you're really super lucky! I don't know if it's because I read this right after having a (silent, inner) temper tantrum about having A/C window units installed before the super left town or what, but this post brought tears to my eyes. My goodness, how true it is! How awesome is all of this? So go ahead, read the whole post for Pasricha's funny, wry breakdown of everything that is awesome about existence. And hurry! As he puts it, "You'll never be as young as you are right now."

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We're all supposed to know that good things happen because of hard work. That the runner who wins the race got there because of her training and determination. But what about the runner, who is a very good runner, who has worked hard but is tired, and finds herself in last place? Could fate have a hand in that?

Last place is where high school junior runner Meghan Vogel found herself on Saturday, at the Division III girls state meet in Columbus, Ohio. She'd just won 1,600 meter race and was worn out, and found herself lagging behind in her next run, the 3,200. Then with about 20 meters to go, the girl in front of her collapsed. According to ESPN, Meghan helped the girl, a sophomore named Arden McMath, to her feet, and carried her across the finish line. Oh, and she made sure Arden got across the finish line before her.

Just like anyone would, right? Um, I doubt it, though Meghan seems to think so: "Any girl on the track would have done the same for me," she told ESPN. "I think fate may have put me (in last place) for a reason." She's attracted international attention for her action, to which she says, "I just did what I knew was right and what I was supposed to do." Well, apparently someone was raised right. (You must check out the ESPN article for a photo of the girls running the race -- I feel like I want to make an inspirational poster of it to look at when exercising should I ever do such a thing. Those pained yet utterly determined expressions!)

This wise teenager seems to have found some meaning in the overwhelming media response to her action: we love good news, yes, but also, we need this idea that you find yourself where you are for a reason. Even if where you find yourself seems to be last place. Because it's only last place if you let it be.

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Dorothy Flood has fond memories of riding trains to visit family every summer as a child, but there was always a strange moment, a moment that has gnawed at her for decades. As Flood told NPR recently, "When we'd get to Baltimore, that was the Mason-Dixon Line...The African-Americans would go in the back ... and white people would go into separate cars...It didn't make any sense because I was going to school with them. I lived next to them. But now that I crossed that Mason-Dixon Line, I couldn't be with them? I didn't understand it." Flood and her grandmother never got to eat in the fancy dining car, instead eating homemade meals from shoeboxes. In an especially affecting anecdote, Flood remembers standing on one side of the dining car's etched glass door and tracing the fingertips of a girl her age on the other side of the door -- a white girl eating in the dining car.

Well, recently Flood finally got her chance, at age 75, to dine in the dining car of the Royal Gorge Route Railroad. (This happened thanks to an awesome program called Wish of a Lifetime, kind of like Make-a-Wish but for seniors. ) "Oh she would have loved this," she said of her grandmother. Listening to this story, I thought of Flood's grandmother, of how heartbreaking it would be to explain to a child, This world we live in, it is unjust, and it is unjust specifically to you, and here is how you must deal with it. And how glad her grandmother would be, to see Flood in the dining car, enjoying a meal and a glass of wine. And how the simplest things—being on one side of a glass door or another—can make all the difference in a life, whether we realize it at the time or not.

Learn more about how Wish of a Lifetime, along with their partner, Brookdale Senior Living, enriches the lives of seniors.

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My kids are obsessed with this song "Don't Give Up."  (Yes that would be Bruno Mars singing on Sesame Street.) We sing it to each other all the time, and lately we're having lots of conversations like this: My daughter says, "This is too hard!" And I say, "You're right. Let's give up. I can't color this Diego coloring page. It'll never work. Let's lie on the floor and cry." And a knowing smile spreads across her face and she says, "Nooooo, don't give up! DON'T GIVE UP!" It's a silly game, but I also can't help feeling like it's a kind rehearsal for larger, more give-uppier moments.

I doubt this "Don't Give Up" game would work with anyone over the age of 3, though, so instead I offer: Matt. W.

A reader just sent me the link to this video and oh man. This boy, 9-year-old Matt W., is a total and complete inspiration. Matt, who has spastic cerebral palsy, decided to do the 400-meter run at his school's track-and-field day, apparently on a mission to make everyone in the world's hearts explode out of their chests at once. He runs. He struggles. He runs. And then, his teacher and classmates join him, cheering him on. Now here's a word of warning: you have to stick with this video. There's a stretch in the middle where Matt is running, alone, a bit like a baby deer, and you will think you can't do it. But listen, if this kid can run this race, you can watch this video. Wait for the end. Wait for the little subtitle "It's okay to start crying now. Matt's mom is." If you can even see if through your tears.

Will you ever give up again?

via Yahoo Sports (Thanks, @TheGnombre!)

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Photo: André Vergueiro

Well, it's June, and you know what that means: It's Skyscraper Month, of course! I know. Huh? And yet, there's something exciting about skyscrapers: the unlikeliness of their Jetsons-esque, extra-natural appearance; the enormous cajones it takes for someone to say, Yep, I am going to design and build a structure as tall as it can possibly be. Wait, taller.   A skyscraper is basically ambition in structure form.

So you've got to love this concept a group of Portuguese architects, Ana Luisa Soares, Filipe Magalhães, and André Vergueiro came up with for the awesomely-named Rooftops, Why Not? contest: putting public schools on top of New York City skyscrapers. As they put it, "What if suddenly the education would become the highest (and most visible) value of a society?" The resulting imagery is dreamy and futuristic, and evokes the question: How else can our urban spaces be reimagined? And: what do our structures say about what we value in life? And: how cute and raucous would the "School Elevator" be?

Be sure to visit the Cargo Collective site for more gorgeous images of architectural inspiration.
(via Curbed)

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1. My mother used to have this card hanging in the laundry room on which a friend of hers had scrawled a quote from a poem:

“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,   

"A goal is arguably just a random something that is sufficiently far away. A caprice. But somehow, if taken seriously, if treated as fate, a goal can make an odyssey out of what would otherwise just be the small hours of life. One sets out to fulfill the prophecy no prophet ever professed, and the drama of how to get there from here makes meaning out of what might otherwise be just meanderings."
--From an ELLE magazine profile of one of our heroes, Diana Nyad, who will make another attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida this summer.

Each week, we'll be letting you know about new releases the editors at O and Oprah.com couldn't stop reading. This week, we're swooning over the dark, compassionate short-story collection:

Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain
By Lucia Perillo

"Don't tell me about bad boys," writes Lucia Perillo. "I've seen my black clouds come and go." What she's also seen are some pretty dark-minded women—from a solitary mother addicted to cough syrup to a mistreated housewife who dreams of armed robbery. In the hands of a less-talented writer, these characters would turn out hard-boiled and, worse, hard to love. Instead, Perillo infuses each one with joy and humor, celebrating the best intentions behind the worst choices. The stunner of the collection is "Big-Dot Day," in which a mother and her young son, Arnie, set off from Las Vegas to the Washington coast, following yet another "new guy," who has plans to work a salmon boat. Left alone in the motel room, Arnie hatches a plan to go fishing—and what he catches (hint: it's not a fish) turns out to be both amazing and hilarious yet so quietly indicative of this boy's loneliness that you have to sit for a while, contemplating how it is that we all survive growing up. Relentlessly compassionate, this is a collection for the mistake makers and trying-as-hard-as-we-canners of the world—which probably means all of us.

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