When do you feel most alive?
A thought crosses my mind. One of those repeat thoughts. That I often feel more alive when reading than, generally, when talking to someone. What about you?
That is far from the only time I feel most alive. When writing something that grips me. When exploring a thought. When waking up with an idea. When presenting an idea to people who listen and respond. Sometimes, when walking outdoors in nature.
But for now, I’m thinking of reading - and the aliveness I feel when reading a good story.
I was a bookworm for a long time, in childhood and way past that. Partly I was often lonely, very lonely. But it was way more than that. So often life felt boring. And a good book was not boring. So often, in the everyday world, in childhood and continuing into adulthood, I didn't know what to do beyond the humdrum. Hopscotch. Snakes and ladders. Dishes. Homework.
Books - they took me to so many different worlds, on so many adventures. Pippi Longstocking has come to mind. I can't remember anything about what happened to her, except that she didn't comb her bright red braids for months, and then her hair took hours to untangle.
I feel more alive, just thinking of reading. Just now, a novel by Andre Norton, Cat's Eye, comes to mind. I read it when I was about 12. My first novel on a post-nuclear-war future. More than 200 years in the future. I remember there was travel through dangerous territory into a city that had been built long ago. Danger lurked. And someone had cat's eyes, a mutation from the nuclear fallout.
The world of that book stayed alive in my imagination for years.
The feeling - I need to write this, to reach people with this thought, this feeling - that also goes back almost forever. 2006 - my first online blog. As for the desire to write and to reach, that goes back way further. To childhood. Such a sense of aliveness, as I put together thoughts.
And that brings me to a decision. "It all starts with a decision." I've heard that many times. My decision, about these posts, is to let them come from my aliveness, and reach out to yours, maybe stir your aliveness.
What is most alive in me, for me, at this time?
I have nothing to say, right now, about what's going on.
Many of us know quite a bit about what's going on. We know of looming food shortages. Of blatant wrong doings - like dangerous injections pushed on children though there are no benefits for the children. There's also a war in the Ukraine. Inflation. Fuel shortages. Our well-bring is not of interest to most of those with power.
Lots of great people are doing their best to let us know about what’s going on.
I get, into my inbox, what’s new from quite a number of trusted information sources.
But when I think of aliveness, what's coming to mind, right now, are all the many fabulous novels I have read. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. War and Peace. Villette. Frost in May. Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Lord of the Rings. The Stone Angel. The Diviners. Crackpot. Brave New World. 1984. Animal Farm. Hundreds of novels.
They brought me more alive.
That’s what's pulling me.
Here is a moment of inner aliveness. I was imagining being a 13-year-old. And she was asking herself a question: Who is this person I call me? I think it’s a question many of us have asked ourselves.
https://rumble.com/v192okr-who-am-i-who-is-this-person-i-call-me.html
One of the things she wonders:
will the day be boring
will it be all doing chores
or will I, just once, touch the stars
In other words, will it be a day of being fully alive?
Elsa
Posted July 7, 2022
Beautiful musings you bring forth. I too feel even "more" alive when transported by reading a great book or article into my imagination. Thank-you for sharing your thoughts!
I am most alive when the Holy Spirit reveals to me a new truth.