Most mornings—once the coffee is made and the dogs are fed and the chickens are let out into the garden and a pot of oats start slow cooking on the stove—I don my favorite cardigan—the one which never leaves my house but waits for me on the coat tree in the hall for just this moment—and then begin my day out on the deck, coffee mug warming my fingers, the smallest of fires warming my toes as I sit facing where the sun will eventually rise.

At this same time in fall and winter the stars would still be shining in a dark sky, but the long days of summer get an early start and the sun’s light in the east is already backlighting my favorite sycamore tree with such dazzling highlights and shadows on its thousands of leaves I think to myself, “My God, in a hundred years I could never fashion such a stunning display of architecture.” It’s extremely humbling.

In point of fact I find just about everything in nature extremely humbling. The sycamore. The inch round gold and red blossoms on the Tacoma Sunrise that lives at its feet. The perfume of sage that lingers in our black Lab’s fur after he has brushed by it in his silent morning inspection of the garden. How hummingbirds barely larger than my pinky performing feats of aerial wonder that for them is as natural as breathing. Why birdsong can fill the morning with sound without ever seeming loud. How field mice, barely the size of cotton balls, have made their home in the gaps of the stone wall under the wisteria arbor and how every morning they gather directly beneath the bird feeders as they wait for the finches and wrens and sparrows to spill a few seeds and grains from their breakfast onto the gravel below. How a fox squirrel can run at full speed across a power line. How our beagles can sense a jogger who’s still several blocks away. How the chickens suddenly break their morning silence with an excited two minute long cluck-fest announcing that it’s egg laying time. How Tina can be even more beautiful when she gives me a sleepy hug and how amazing her hair smells when I kiss the top of her head.

And all of this happens every day in my tiny corner of the world. I share them with you in the confident knowledge that such wondrous things are happening in every corner of the world, including yours. I’d call it all a beautiful theatrical production but it’s not theater. It’s real. Beautifully humblingly real. And I can’t help but think if we all pulled ourselves away from our own theatrical fictions long enough to perceive the very real wonders happening all around us then we’d all start the day with a solid dose of truth and beauty and perspective and grateful humility.

With the clock ever ticking in my ear a little truth and beauty and perspective and grateful humility is all I’m really looking for these days. I have this fanciful notion that if we all remembered to take our daily dose of simple wonders we’d each be changed by truth and beauty and perspective and grateful humility, and then the world would change too.

I try to take my daily dose of wonder because it changes me. Because it humbles me. Because it helps me be the best version of myself.

What changes and humbles you? What helps you be the best version of you? Whatever it is, do it. Wherever it is, find it. I’m fairly certain it’s the most important thing you can do. Find a little truth and beauty and perspective and grateful humility, let it change you into your best self, and then let your best self get busy building yourself a beautiful life.