The daily hassle, the trying to make ends meet, the never ending work routine, the cabs that won't stop when you're running late, and the bills that keep piling up - in short, all the bits and pieces of a struggle that just wear you out. On occasion, it makes you wonder what the point is of it all.

The point, my friends, is living. Contrary to what the media will have you believe, you will not be famous (not even for 10 minutes) and you will not be a millionaire. The bills will keep piling up and you will be stuck to a routine. When your car breaks down (because you only have one and it might not be a Mercedes), you might be forced to hail a cab.

You are a normal, run of the mill human being. What is so wrong with that? Nothing at all.

Every individual is a microcosm - unique, glorious in its complexity, dazzling in its happiness, touching in its sorrow, and heartbreaking in its weakness. If we could only see ourselves for who we are: a spirit encased in a body of flesh, a spirit that could soar were it not for the mental entrapments that weigh us down - then wouldn't we find some of that happiness, or at least the contentment we all long for?

Yes, the media will continue to bomb your brain cells with messages that are only detrimental: you are not cool enough, you are not thin enough, you are not successful enough, you need this product in your life so badly, you need more income, you need a credit card, and the lives of the rich and famous are so much more interesting than your own.

As Jeunet's extraordinary film Amelie states so well, every life, no matter how ordinary, can become something extraordinary if you choose to live it that way.

Thinking we have only sixty or seventy years on this earth, do we not want to live better and dream better? Make our lives a simple yet extraordinary chain of events?

I walk by the ocean, breathing the salty air, thinking I am starting anew in one of the southernmost cities in the world. I am scared, perhaps, of beginning from scratch and trying to make some sense out of this thing we call living.

I now realize I spent many years striving for things that in the long run, do not account for happiness or joy or even contentment. I was trying to achieve what the media would had me believe was the best way my life could unfold. I was trying to look the way the media told me I should look. I owned what the media told me was pleasurable to own. I thought my un-extraordinary life was not the way I had pictured it in my teens.

I didn't have a house or a car and I did not have a great, glamorous job. I was 28 years old and still not married. My family and friends would give their opinion, "I think you should find a job where you can make more money." "When are you going to buy a house; you're already 28?" "Any boyfriend yet?" "You know, you'd look great if you lost three pounds."