Alive

To feel alive we must embrace this world as is - yes, like a fixer-upper you are ready to buy because somehow, even with all its imperfection it speaks to you with its enigmatic, magnetic, and palpable to you special energy. To feel alive we must accept ourselves the same way, and with the same brutal honesty - noting all the peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, potentiality, capriciousness, and aspirations. To feel alive one must love people - same way, same approach - as is. Yes, they will disappoint us, perhaps often, like the old fixer-upper probably will at times. Still, they’ll give us shelter - one for our body to house it safely there, and another for the soul - to find solace and peace among the ones we know how to forgive. 

To live in this world we must love living. We must love everything that is alive. And see, and feel, and embrace the fact that everything is alive. Not only the creatures visibly pulsating with breath. But even then how much do we love them? How much do you care about the existence of the tiny bug and the funny-looking opossum? 

I’ve been feeding a baby opossum lately. Every night it visits, I enjoy seeing its furry body growing bigger, its bravery a bit more visible each time, and its weirdly-shaped face looking more cute to me, like becoming part of something that I am part of. One day I was able to see this world a bit more inclusively, and realize that there is space not only for the baby opossum, but also an abundance of space for loving it. 

To be alive we must learn not to be afraid to hold a pebble in our palms, and feel its cool calmness, to express our gratitude for its existence and for its invigorating groundedness. Children love stones and pebbles. We have plenty of the ones my son would bring home after each walk outside. They are all spread around the garden now. He knew how to love and talk to those pebbles then, when he was younger and less burdened with imposed concepts of “right” and “wrong.” Now he and most of us are afraid, and don’t even know it. Now we are unaware. Because most of us want to fit in. To do so, we choose to become unaware, even numb. 

It’s up to us to instead choose to belong, feel alive, and be aware. The pebbles, the birds, the worms, the sky, the sun, and the few worthy souls around us are not going to reject or judge us - they love us all the same, even when we cannot find a reason to love ourselves. To feel alive we must embrace this fixer-upper world with all its imperfections, and love it for what it is.