I am so grateful to be alive. I cherish being here.

Gratitude for being alive tends to arrive after a near miss and fade within a fortnight. Harder is finding any on a Tuesday with nothing in it.

But Tuesdays are most of what a life is made of. Toast. A rectangle of sun moving slowly across the floor. Someone texting to ask a dull question about the weekend. These aren't the highlights, which is precisely why there are so many of them.

Cherishing isn't a heightened emotional state. It's closer to noticing on purpose, pausing two seconds over the coffee before the day takes it away. Days aren't rationed out in any pattern a person can predict, which is a decent argument for noticing this one.