152 Reasons to Be Alive

Life is good, and often for very special, tiny, specific reasons. Here are mine.

1. The feeling of well-being after sport

2. The soft lips of the person you love against yours

3. The smell of pizza

4. The feeling of drinking water when you’re really thirsty

5. Taking off your shoes to put your feet in the sea

6. Reading a book so good that you come out of a trance two hours later

7. Laughing alone in public because you just thought of something funny, and having to bite your lips to keep from looking crazy

8. Coming home and being filled with a sense of satisfaction about the day you’ve just had

9. Blaring the lyrics of a song while driving alone in your car

10. Putting on your favorite underwear in the morning

11. Having lunch or dinner on the terrace

12. Going to your parents’ house

13. Hearing the song of the cicadas for the first time in the season

14. Waking up to the first rays of sunlight entering the room

15. Receiving good news

16. Going home, being alone, making yourself a good dinner, and eating it in front of your favorite TV show

17. Taking a nap after lunch (or why not after breakfast)

18. Picking up someone you love at the train station

19. Realizing that you look pretty good today

20. Walking out of the hair salon with a clean cut

21. The atmosphere of vacation departures

22. Waking up before dawn and realizing you can go back to sleep for a few hours

23. Experiencing mindfulness

24. The smell of coffee

25. Taking a cold shower in summer

26. Waking up and finding croissants on the breakfast table that someone who got up early went to get

27. Finishing work early and doing something nice in the late afternoon

28. Sunrises

29. Sunsets

30. Putting on something you feel comfortable and sexy in

31. The evening air cooling off after being hot all day in the summer

32. When Spotify randomly puts your three favorite songs in a row

33. When you’ve had a bad day and someone takes care of you at night

34. Massages

35. Feeling in harmony with yourself

36. Jumping for joy

37. Looking back and seeing how much you have evolved or gotten better on this or that point

38. Having a perfect night’s sleep

39. Laughing so hard you cry

40. Film photography

41. Having lunch at your grandma’s house

42. Taking your grandmother to a restaurant for lunch

43. Eating comfort food without feeling guilty

44. Finding out that your efforts have paid off

45. Receiving an opportunity you’ve been dreaming of

46. Tasting a new dish

47. Getting a new tattoo

48. Dyeing your hair a cool color

49. Receiving a compliment, from a stranger or someone you love

50. Dancing like nobody’s watching

51. Feeling the naked body of the person you love against your own naked skin

52. Traveling alone

53. Traveling in good company

54. Spending quality time with your brother or sister

55. Meeting a friend for a drink after a long week at work

56. Realizing that you have a common passion with a friend, then practicing it together

57. Putting on sunscreen and forgetting a small spot, and realizing that the spot got sunburned, so thankfully you remembered to put sunscreen on the rest of your body

58. Finding out that the sauce in your lunch box has leaked, except that you’ve put a plastic bag around it so you thwarted the adversity

59. Putting on the first pair of shorts of the season

60. Christmas Eve

61. Realizing that the photo you just took is great, that it accurately captures the essence of a person, or that it freezes an action impossible to reproduce

62. The warm feeling of the sun on your skin

63. The feeling of fulfillment that you get at your favorite artists’ concert when you sing and dance and feel carried by the energy of the moment

64. The long walks alone, with or without music

65. Realizing how much your body does for you

66. Eating ice cream from a cone while walking by the sea

67. Receiving a letter

68. Spending time in a bookstore

69. Buying books

70. Seeing your meal arrive at the restaurant

71. Going to the funfair

72. Having accomplished something that was important to you

73. Making someone laugh

74. Feeling happy and grateful to be alive

75. Singing and hitting a certain note and being surprised at yourself

76. Taking up a hobby you haven’t done in years

77. Learning something new

78. Virgin piña coladas

79. Repeating the joke of the moment that keeps making your mom laugh

80. The sound of a soda can being opened

81. Successfully pranking someone

82. Ordering food at the drive-through and eating in your car in the fast-food parking lot with your significant other, music playing and windows open

83. Sitting on the sand of a quiet beach and looking at the sea, preferably at the end of the day

84. Looking at the stars and perceiving the immensity of the universe and the mystery of life

85. The beautiful plays of light

86. When your pet spontaneously climbs on you asking for love

87. The smell of a cake baking in the oven

88. When you arrive home and your partner or your mother or father has cooked your favorite dish

89. Surprises

90. Pancakes

91. Mixing two foods that don’t normally go together and finding out that it’s delicious

92. When you find a banknote in your pants pocket

93. When you’ve just finished cleaning and your house is spotless

94. When you cook a dish for the first time and it’s delicious

95. When you make eye contact at the bar with someone you think is cute

96. Arriving at a restaurant, saying you have a reservation, and finding out they gave you the best table

97. Surprising someone

98. Feeling loved

99. Going to bed on clean sheets

100. Eating a freshly picked fruit from the tree, delicious and warmed by the sun

101. Waking up without an alarm clock

102. The first vacation day

103. All other vacation days

104. Sleeping with a pillow in your arms

105. Melting marshmallows on a campfire

106. When your favorite song suddenly comes on the radio

107. Avocados

108. The sound of frogs at night

109. Catching that train you thought you’d miss

110. The smell of a French bakery

111. Creating

112. When the waiter forgets something on your restaurant bill

113. When something you have longed for becomes a reality when you no longer believe in it

114. When someone says they are proud of you

115. When you feel proud of yourself

116. Stretching

117. Wrapping up in a blanket when it’s cold

118. The wind rushing through your clothes when you wear a light shirt

119. The sound of footsteps in the snow

120. A bowl of diced watermelon

121. Resting your head on a soft pillow

122. Losing the feeling of gravity when you are in the water

123. Feeling intensely alive

124. When you take the train or the plane and the seat next to you remains vacant

125. When you go shopping and the cashier gets the price wrong and you pay less than you should have

126. Recovering an old, pleasant habit

127. Feeling supported in times of great sorrow

128. The warmth of human contact

129. Opening a button on your pants when you have eaten too much

130. The smell of a perfume that suddenly brings back a memory

131. Lying in the grass when it’s a little cool

132. The smell of the forest

133. Reading by the fire

134. Drinking a hot chocolate

135. Being happy to go to work in the morning

136. Making a ladybug fly away from your fingertips

137. Creating something with your hands

138. Eating raw cake dough

139. Biting into a juicy fruit

140. Waking up and feeling good

141. Making breakfast for a loved one before they get up

142. The first coffee of the morning

143. Drying off in a soft towel after a shower

144. Looking for shells on the beach

145. The feeling of being comfortably full

146. Seeing fireflies

147. Taking off your bra when you get home

148. The cool breeze that comes into your house in the summer when you open all the windows

149. Doing a good deed

150. Putting your feet in new, soft socks

151. Seeing a rainbow

152. Eating cereal in milk and having it stay crunchy