Emotions are amazing, when you think about them.

Here we are in these physical bodies, an orchestra of precise chemistry, right down to the atom. And there are entire universes expanding inside us. An inner landscape completely separate from the outer world we find ourselves in, and yet we are so viscerally connected to what transpires there that we become altered; our experiences transforming, physically, our world within.

Something tragic happens and our bodies flood with cortisol until the ache we feel spreads to every inch of us. Until it’s difficult to get out of bed in the mornings, and we wonder, if we will ever be light again.

Something we’ve longed for happens and these same bodies react in vibrant bursts of dopamine and serotonin. A symphony of feel-good sensations as though fireworks have risen up to explode from the center of us, and everything becomes possible.

And the events that inspire these physical changes within us may be fleeting, but they linger, too. The way that ink stains our fingers. The way that grains of sand are never fully gone from the soles of our shoes after a day at the beach. And for some of these events, we are only ever one song away from triggering a feeling so moving that it all comes flooding back, washing over us the same as it did the very first time.

And how wonderous of a thing it really is, to be Here. To feel this world and the people in it not just with our hands, but somewhere deep, beneath our skin.