I Feel so ALIVE!!!!

I Feel so ALIVE!!!!

So here’s a curious little thing you might not know about me, cuz it seems like I tell you everything. This summer I was a couple hours away from death by colon cancer and surgery saved me.

That’s kind of a dramatic thing, and if you know me, and I think you do, you know I don’t much go in for drama. In the olden days, I loved drama. I thought it was exciting. I liked getting attention, even though it was mostly negative attention. I was such an adrenaline junkie, always looking for something to get cranked up about. I thought I felt alive, but mostly what I felt was jangled.

What I do like is feeling alive. For me, that means feeling present in my natural life; engaged, fresh, aware, joyful, contented, surfing the flow of life. Oh, yeah!

What a lot of us do is avoid feeling alive. We go to miserable. We go to worry. We go to stress. We say things like, “I can’t, I always, that’s just the way I am.” We feel hollow and wonder what is missing, so we have another whatever we go to for that kind of comfort, a drink, a toke, a candy bar, sex, TV; we each have our favorite go-tos.

Why am I alive? How do I feel vibrant? What makes me relish my existence?

Until we decide that we want to feel our aliveness, we pretty much won’t. Sometimes we may get a taste of it when we have great sex, or enjoy some other high-energy activity that gets our blood moving, but unlike choosing aliveness, this sort of thing fades pretty quickly.

When I choose aliveness, I choose to open to what life will bring me. I become aware of the myriad opportunities around me for so much. On my way into work this morning, I started thinking about all the people I love, all the people I like, and how much I get back from them. Next thing I knew, I felt loved by the world, the environment I was driving through, the cosmos. Pretty trippy for a normal commute, but not untypical for me these days.

When I choose aliveness, it is challenging for me to be disappointed. Things are perfect in this moment. I appreciate this moment. I open my heart to the possibilities of the moment.

When I choose aliveness, it is challenging for me to be scared or angry or full of grief. These are feelings out of the present time for the most part, imagining bad stuff about the future, or dwelling on stuff from the past. Sometimes we have to go there to clean up our emotional responses, to work through an old issue, but just going there to hang out keeps us from living in the present.

I think there is a difference between living in the moment, and living for the moment. When I am present, in the moment, I am aware of my choices. I am aware of their consequences, I am aware of my goals. I may not have them at the front of my mind, but they are close. When I am living for the moment, I am usually ignoring my choices, ignoring their consequences, and ignoring my goals. I am frequently disrespectful of myself, and of you. It might be fun at the time, but I rarely love the payback.

Why would I choose alive? How does aliveness support me? How do I feel when I feel alive?

How have I changed from feeling numb or worse to enjoying feeling alive?

© Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 11132014