These are the reasons.

At eleven o'clock on a Tuesday, I found my teenage son and his younger sister in the living room, building a fort out of a giant pile of clean, unfolded laundry.

Every weekday morning on the 7:12 commuter train, a group of women knits in the third car. I noticed them for months before one of them offered me a spare pair of needles.

My grandfather served on a navy ship in the 1950s, and this spring there was a reunion for the surviving crew in Norfolk. He couldn't drive that far anymore, so I took him. Nine hours each way.

On Sunday mornings, the bakery near my apartment props its door open and plays jazz records. The line usually runs out onto the sidewalk.

My grandkids came to stay for a long weekend in November, and it rained the whole time. By Saturday afternoon, we had run out of board games, cookies and patience.

My partner and I do the Sunday crossword together in bed, one pen between us, which causes about four arguments per puzzle.

My daughter is three, and today she picked her first strawberry from our little container garden on the balcony.

My husband and I have been married for forty-six years and have never danced together properly. At every wedding, we did a sort of shuffle. This year, for our anniversary, our daughter bought us ballroom dance lessons.

Living Is So Big 99 (Special edition)
The Living Is So Big represents "Life Appreciation" and the 99 represents "ninety-nine reasons to live for". Why 99? The numerology number 99 is tolerant, compassionate, and idealistic. 99 is worldly and sophisticated. It has a philanthropic focus on humankind and it all begins with you.

Feel free to gather 99 reasons from this website or re-discover 99 reasons on your own.

YOU ARE KIND OF A BIG DEAL
Whether you want someone to understand that they are important to you, or they could use a boost of positivity, this card makes a BIG statement. With its flashy colors and positive key words placed with large font, you can be sure that you will make an impression in the life of the one that receives this card.

My grandmother is eighty-three and plays video games. Specifically, she plays a farming game on her tablet every morning with her coffee, and she is very, very good at it.

I had a week off work in June and nowhere to go, so I decided to spend it doing everything slowly.

The library in my small town keeps a jigsaw puzzle on a table near the front window. Anyone can add a piece. When it's done, they start a new one.

Every October, my extended family goes to the same pumpkin patch in Ohio for the hayride. There are twenty-two of us now, ranging in age from four months to eighty-nine years.

On a windy Saturday in March, my partner and I drove to the beach with two cheap kites we'd bought at a drugstore. It was cold and gray and nobody else was there.

My mother put a note in my lunchbox every school day from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Thirteen years. Over two thousand notes.

For my sister's fortieth birthday, I secretly mailed a fabric square to forty people who love her and asked them to decorate it. Old friends, cousins, her college roommate, her kids' teachers, her neighbor of fifteen years.

When my son turned twelve, he got a paper route. Three weeks in, he got the flu, and I took over for him. At five in the morning, at fifty years old, in my bathrobe and sneakers.

A man in my local park juggles every Sunday afternoon near the fountain. One day I worked up the courage to ask him if he'd teach me. He handed me three beanbags and said, "First, you have to learn to drop them."

Hi my Name is Bill.

I am a Desert Storm Veteran with PTSD. I am also a 3 time suicide attempt survivor. I felt the demons of war were too much and life was not worth living. I have since put my life into helping people. I have taken care of my mom until her passing, and thought I couldn't go on after that. Then I started helping take care of an elderly neighbor.

My life has truly changed when I let God back into my life. Jesus Agudo and his wife Iliana talked with me about 6-7 years ago when they were on trip here in Emporia KS, at a furniture store grand opening. They talked to me about my attempts and about why life is worth living. I now devote my life to helping people and being a friend and listening if someone needs me to be there for them.

Every year for the Mid-Autumn Festival, my grandmother makes mooncakes from scratch. This year, for the first time, she let me help.