He's blessed, too, with an awareness of his blessings, a sense not only of gratitude for them but also of the obligation they confer, and it emerges that this sense of obligation is what allows him to withstand his disappointments; indeed, to flourish within his circumscribed world.
But the picture Saunders paints of humanity is one that is united by its messiness, pettiness, self-awareness; but blessed with an inherent, irrepressible goodness that only needs the right test to expose it, sometimes one as little as being able to pay the bills, or sometimes as big as killing yourself to stop someone else dying.
The highways outside the city of Boulder are peppered with the burrows of prairie dogs, a species of rodent related to the squirrel, and also, it seems, blessed with a degree of political awareness unusual among herbivorous burrowing animals.
Every single day I live with the awareness that I have been blessed.
Our sadness won't be of the searing kind, more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the happiness before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
It's having awareness every day that you are alive and that you are blessed (in ways others may not be).
So in honor of Mastin and my own evolving awareness, I'd like to share a couple reframed thoughts that have really blessed my life.
In February this year, I was honored and blessed to be among a total of about 80 teenagers (split up into four different groups) speaking on suicide awareness, breaking it down to authentic-self awareness.
A blonde wig, (for those not already blessed with hair as golden as the sun) a spot of lippy and a total lack of self-awareness provide the styling groundwork here.
