To Be Alive

By Maria Shriver
July 19, 2025

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”

I love this quote from Marcus Aurelius, and I’ve been trying to sit with it all week. Really sit with it. Not just read it and move on, but pause and feel the privilege of being alive.

Every week, I read about people my age or younger who have passed away. I'm still thinking about the little girls from Camp Mystic and their families. And this week, I also found myself thinking about Colorado’s poet laureate Andrea Gibson, whom we featured here in The Sunday Paper just a few months ago. Andrea passed away from cancer. I shared Andrea reading some poems on my social page, and I couldn’t stop replaying the videos and watching Andrea read these wise words about life, love, death, and the afterlife. Andrea was extraordinary. And now, no longer gets to be alive. No longer gets to write, to think, to love.

Marcus Aurelius was right. It is indeed a privilege to be able to do all of those things, and yet most of us take them for granted.

I thought about that again during my physical this week. I thought about it as I walked through hospital hallways, bearing witness to people who can’t walk, who struggle to breathe, who are dependent on another human being to go from here to there. It all makes you think, doesn’t it? Or at least it should.

We spend so much of our time not feeling privileged, not honoring the fact that we can walk, talk, think, breathe, love. Instead, we get lost in the noise, in the gossip, in the mess of life. And in doing so, we miss the simple offerings of daily life.

This week, so many people wanted to speak to me about the Epstein files. The Epstein files? Really? I actually don’t care to talk about the Epstein files at all. I really don’t. That story is a mess. It’s not going to nurture anyone’s soul. It’s not going to feed any hungry children or help families caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s or other dementias. It’s just going to feed conspiracy theorists and the algorithm. I don’t want to spend my energy there.

On the other hand, I would be happy to discuss the news about states suing the federal government over disaster relief. I’d love to discuss how to reinstate competent people in important jobs in our federal government. I’d like to know the plan to update our weather services, so that they are staffed with people who know what they are doing. Or the plan to ensure the FAA has enough air traffic controllers so planes don’t crash into one another this summer during a busy travel season. I’d love it if we could have a national conversation about how we are going to prevent another outbreak like COVID, now that so many who were responsible for that work are no longer doing it.

I’d love to talk about the millions of people aging without resources, without being able to afford caregivers. I’d love to calmly, honestly discuss how we can prioritize the truth and facts so that they can rise above all the misinformation that certain people spew so easily. I’d love to talk about CBS canceling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” a beloved show that was doing so well. That’s unheard of, but so is everything that CBS has been doing as of late.

I’d love to talk about reframing success so that more people of all ages in our world feel seen and valued. I’d love to talk about exactly what is the brass ring we are pushing ourselves and our children towards with such intensity. I’d love to talk about how we can live lives of meaning—lives that make us feel grateful for being able to think, breathe, walk, and be alive.

I’ve spent a lot of my life running to the next thing, the next big goal. Sitting still has never been my strength. But since I’ve come back from my book tour, I’ve resisted coming up with another Mt. Everest-style goal so I can actually feel my life, see my life, and love my life.

For some reason, my goals have always required pushing a boulder uphill. They’ve often taken me years—years of pushing up the mountain, only to roll back down and have to start pushing up again. And once I reached the top, I’d run back down just to find a new mountain. But not this time. This time is different. I know it. I feel it. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a couple months away from celebrating a big new decade, but thank God, something is different.

The other night, my friends Jack Kornfield and his wife Trudy Goodman came to dinner. I love them both individually and as a couple. I love the work they put out into the world—their teachings, their guidance, their service to humanity. Both are 80 (Jack just celebrated his birthday this past week). They have both been guiding lights in my life.

At dinner, Jack—who came and did a meditation at one of my conversation stops—asked me this: "Maria, now that your book is behind you, what’s next?"

I said, “You know, I don’t know. For the first time, I don’t know."

"That’s so exciting,” Jack said.

Then he added something critical. "If you can tolerate not knowing for as long as possible,” Jack said, “then something incredible will emerge. Transformation comes from sitting in the not knowing. It comes from being able to tolerate not being able to answer that very question."

So, I’m sitting with not knowing.

Not knowing how things will turn out in Washington, D.C.... I have a hunch, but I don’t know.

I’m sitting with not knowing whether we, as in we the people can find our way back to one another.

Can we ever trust each other again? Trust the media? Trust our institutions?

I want to believe we will. I hope we will. But honestly, I don’t really know.

That doesn’t mean I won’t use my voice. I will. On all of the above. I just don’t know if it will cut through the noise.

Instead of being anxious about that, I’m sitting with the gratitude I have for being simply being alive.

I’m entertaining—perhaps for the first time in my life—that there is nothing for me to fix or conquer. Maybe the same is true for you.

Accepting yourself doesn’t mean you’ll never change or grow. In fact, real transformation often happens once the need to change relaxes. When you stop trying to force your way into wholeness, you create space for natural, soul-led growth—the kind that is rooted in curiosity (and I’ve always had so much of that!). I’ve come to learn that fixing oneself usually comes from a place of fear—fear that there is something wrong with you, that you are not successful enough yet, that you are behind everyone else.

But that’s a lie. It’s like a conspiracy theory. It’s designed to keep you scrambling, caught in the noise, and missing the beauty of your life. The life you are living right now. The one you’re lucky to be alive in.

So, do yourself a favor. Give yourself a minute to sit and rest for a moment or two—or maybe a day, or the whole week—to reflect on the privilege of being alive. Trust me, you will not miss anything in the news. And if you do, I’ll tell you.