Swaddled

At birth, we are cleaned, swaddled, fed, and embraced. And with each day that follows, these actions become daily rituals. We bathe, we dress, we seek nourishment and love--such basic needs, really. Yet love can be so elusive, can seem so complicated. Food and clothing so extremely opulent or tragically deprived, depending on one's circumstances. It's only natural to wonder how it must feel to experience either extremes.

Despite the fact that we have megastores for toiletries and more megastores for food, magazines telling us what to wear and how to look, and the same magazines telling us how to find love, and despite the commodification of nearly everything we hold sacred, it is a visceral sense of pleasure one gets when a basic need, a most instinctive desire, is satisfied.

To bathe, to dress, to seek nourishment and love...let's remember that these are not means to an end, but life itself.