To: Me
....You are my remnant.
It is of no avail to ask, haven't you know, haven't you heard, hasn't it been told to you from the beginning; haven't you understood from the foundations of the earth?
You have not known; you have not heard; you have not understood.
You have been told that you are a divinity in disguise, a god playing a fool.
You have been told that you are a special piece of work, noble in reason, infinite in faculties, express and admirable in form and moving, like an angel in action, like a god in apprehension.
You have been told that you are the salt of the earth.
You were given the secret even of moving mountains, of performing the impossible.
You believed no one. You burned your map to happiness, you abandoned your claim to peace of mind, you snuffled out of the candles that had been placed along your destined path of glory, and then you stumbled, lost and frightened, in the darkness of futility and self-pity, until you fell into a hell of your own creation.
Then you cried and beat your breast and cursed the luck that had befallen you. You refused to accept the consequences of your own petty thoughts and lazy deeds and you searched for a scapegoat on which to blame your failure. How quickly you found one.
You blamed me!
You cried that your handicaps, your mediocrity, your lack of opportunity, your failures...were the will of God!
You were wrong!
Let us take inventory. Let us, first, call a roll of your handicaps. For how can I ask you to build a new life lest you have the tools?
Are you blind? Does the sun rise and fall without your witness?
No. You can see...and the hundred million receptors I have placed in your eyes enable you to enjoy the magic of a leaf, a snowflake, a pond, an eagle, a child, a cloud, a star, a rose, a rainbow...and the look of love. Count one blessing.
Are you deaf? Can a baby laugh or cry without your attention?
No. You can hear...and the twenty-four thousand fibers I have built in each of your ears vibrate to the wind in the trees, the tides on the rocks, the majesty of an opera, a robin's plea, children at play...and the words I love you. Count another blessing.
Are you mute? Do your lips move and bring forth only spittle?
No. You can speak...as can no other of my creatures, and your words can calm the angry, uplift the despondent, goad the quitter, cheer the unhappy, warm the lonely, praise the worthy, encourage the defeated, teach the ignorant...and say I love you. Count another blessing.
Are you paralyzed? Does your helpless form despoil the land?
No. You can move. You are not a tree condemned to a small plot while the wind and world abuses you. You can stretch and run and dance and work, for within you I have designed five hundred muscles, two hundred bones, and seven miles of nerve fiber all synchronized by me to do your bidding. Count another blessing.
Are you unloved and unloving? Does loveliness engulf you, night and day?
No. No more. For now you know love's secret, that to receive love it must be given with no thought of its return. To love for fulfillment, satisfaction, or pride is no love. Love is a gift on which no return is demanded. Now you know that to love unselfishly is its own reward. And even should love not be returned it is not lost, for love not reciprocated will flow back to you and soften and purify your heart. Count another blessing. Count twice.
Is your heart stricken? Does it leak and strain to maintain your life?
No. You heart is strong. Touch your chest and feel its rhythm, pulsating, hour after hour, day and night, thirty six million beats each year, year after year, asleep or awake, pumping your blood through more than sixty thousand miles of veins, arteries, and tubing...pumping more than six hundred thousand gallons each year. Man has never created such a machine. Count another blessing.
Are you diseased of skin? Do people turn in horror when you approach?
No. Your skin is clear and marvel of creation, needing only that you tend it with soap and oil and brush and care. In time all steels will tarnish and rust, but not your skin. Eventually the strongest metals will wear, with use, but not that layer that I have constructed around you. Constantly it renews itself, old cells replaced by new, just as old you is now replaced by the new. Count another blessing.
Are your lungs befouled? Does the breath of life struggle to enter you body?
No. Your portholes to life support you even in the vilest of environments of your own making, and they labor always to filter life-giving oxygen through six hundred million pockets of folded flesh while they get rid your body of gaseous wastes. Count another blessing.
Is your blood poisoned? Is it diluted with water and pus?
No. Within your five quarts of blood are twenty-two trillion blood cells and each cell are millions of molecules and within each molecule is an atom oscillating at more than ten million times each second. Each second, two million of your blood cells die to be replaced by two million more in a resurrection that has continued since your first birth. As it has always been inside, so now it is on your outside. Count another blessing.
Are you feeble of mind? Can you no longer think for yourself?
No. Your brain is the most complex structure in the universe. I know. Within its three pounds are thirteen billion nerve cells, more than two times as many cells as there people on your earth. To help you file away every perception, every sound, every taste, every smell, every action you have experienced since the day of your birth, I have implanted, within your cells, more than one thousand billion billion protein molecules. Every incident in your life is there waiting only your recall. And, to assist your brain in the control of your body I have dispersed, throughout your form, four million pain-sensitive structures, five hundred thousand touch detectors, and more than two hundred thousand temperature detectors. No nation's gold is better protected than you. None of your ancient wonders are greater than you.
You are my finest creation.
Within you is enough atomic energy to destroy any of the world's great cities...and rebuild it.
Are you poor? Is there no gold or silver in your purse?
No. You are rich! Together we have just counted your wealth. Study the list. Count them again. Tally your assets!
Why have you betrayed yourself? Why have you cried that all the blessings of humanity were removed from you? Why did you deceive yourself that you were powerless to change your life? are you without talent, senses, abilities, pleasures, instincts, sensations, and pride? Are you without hope? Why do you cringe in the shadows, a giant defeated, awaiting only sympathetic transport into the welcome void and dampness of hell?
You have so much. Your blessing overflow your cup...and you have been unmindful of them, like a child spoiled in luxury, since I have bestowed them upon you with generosity and regularity.
......
On that reasoning you are the most valuable treasure on the face of the earth, for you know who created you and there is only one of you.
Never, in all the seventy billion humans who have walked this planet since the beginning of time has there been anyone exactly like you.
Never, until the end of time, will there be another such as you.
You have shown no knowledge or appreciation of your uniqueness.
Yet, you are the rarest thing in the world.
From your father , in his moment of supreme love, flowed countless seeds of love, more than four hundred million in number. All of them, as they swam within your mother, gave up the ghost and died. All except one! You.
You alone persevered within the loving warmth of your your mother's body, searching for your other half, a single cell from your mother so small that more than two million would be necessary to fill an acorn shell. Yet, despite impossible odds, in that vast ocean of darkness and disaster, you persevered, found that infinitesimal cell, joined with it, and began a new life. Your life.
You arrived, bringing with you, as does every child, the message that I was not yet discouraged of man. Two cells, now united in a miracle. Two cells, each containing twenty-three chromosomes and within each chromosome hundred of genes, which would govern every characteristic about you, from the color of your eyes to the charm of your manner to the size of your brain.
With all the combinations at my command, beginning with that single sperm from your father's four hundred million, through the hundred of genes in each of the chromosomes from your mother and father, I could have created three hundred thousand billion humans, each different from the other.
But who did I bring forth?
You! One of a kind. Rarest of the rare. A priceless treasure, possessed of qualities in mind and speech and movement and appearance and actions as no other has ever lived, lives, or shall live.
.....
Count your blessings.
Proclaim your rarity.
Go another mile.
Use wisely your power of choice.
And one more, to fulfill the other four. Do all things with love...love for yourself, love for all others, and love for me.
Wipe away your tears. Reach out, grasp my hand, and stand straight.
Let me cut the grave cloths that have bound you.
This day you have been notified.
YOU ARE THE GREATEST MIRACLE IN THE WORLD
From the book "The Greatest Miracle In The World" by Og Mandino
