Life is really about experiences. How we choose to experience it is more dependent on our outlook than the thing itself. I choose to be inspired most of the time and by most things. Even the most apparently innocuous thing has a story all its own.

Take for example this bowl of cereal. When you look at it, what do you see? I see the very complexity of life itself.

First of all there was the corn that was grown to create the flakes. Then without humans there would not be the flakes themselves. It took an awful lot of evolution to create these flakes. They have been in development for literally millions of years.

First the human brain had to developed, which meant we had to evolve less muscles in our jaw so there was more room in our skulls for a larger brain. Then with our larger brains we were able to create better tools known as machines and the processes required to manufacture food products on a mass scale. So all of this made the flakes themselves possible.

Creating the metal for the spoon was a miraculous achievement in itself (it required us understanding that we need to heat iron ore beyond 2000 degrees and use carbon in order to make steel) but the actual process for the mass production of these implements is the pinnacle of human ingenuity and demonstrates much engineering prowess to boot.

There is also milk and so we needed to understand that we could create machines to gather the milk, invent refrigeration and also pasturize it to make it safer for human consumption. Finally, I like sugar on mine so there were a myriad of inventions for creating sugar (my favorite being the sugar beet of which the plant is poisonous to humans but whose roots yield much sugar).

So all in all you can see that your morning cereal is a great deal more complex and interesting than you may first have thought when you opened the box this morning. So the next time you are feeling bored or disconnected or even to simply get more enjoyment from your day and this thing called life, try learning about the origins of simple things in your daily routine. You may find that this thing called life is far more interesting and exciting. I know I sure do.