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Thank you for my life

Published by Josh on September 7, 2026
Art by Brianna Ashby. I bought this print and, if it comes back in stock, you should too. Her work is incredible.

I don’t know what I believe. I’d like for there to be something larger than myself, because the arrogance to believe I might be the largest thing there is is so unbearable. It’s self-unselecting, that. To believe in something of such utter selfishness. You’d have to be some kind of asshole to look at the scale we exist in and think somehow this is the pinnacle of all being and that there’s nothing greater, only that which is lesser.

There’s this moment in a movie that most would call a forgettable part of both Tom Hanks’s and Meg Ryan’s careers, Joe Versus the Volcano, that became something like belief to me. 

Joe is at what should be his lowest moment. He believes he’s dying, after having barely lived. He’s on a chartered yacht, sailing his way to become a human sacrifice on some tiny speck of an island in service of a wealthy nutjob who must needs continue his exploitation of their population, and this storm wells up and tears the boat he’s on to pieces. He has been floating for days on the open ocean, on a raft made out of the lashed together collection of his newly purchased, ridiculously sized luggage. He’s tired and sunburnt and leathery with dehydration. It’s dark and calm on the empty expanse of ocean and he and Meg Ryan’s character are the only interruption of this visible arc of the earth. They are absolutely and overwhelmingly alone.

The moon, this enormous full moon, in all its patterns and shades and wonders, rises before him, a mottled marble of light emerging from the black horizon, splitting the sea from the stars. And he stands atop this raft with what little strength is left in his legs. And he raises his arms, in reverence and awe, before collapsing back to his knees. And he rasps out these words:

“Dear God, whose name I do not know, thank you for my life. I forgot how big… Thank you. Thank you for my life.”

I don’t know if it’s religion, but that’s what I have. Thank you for my life. It is all so great, and I am so small, and thank you for allowing me this space and this time to exist within, and everything placed before and around and among and within me. Thank you. Thank you for my life.

Published inWriting