Welcome to today’s dose of wisdom.
Today we are talking about:
“Living” versus “Being Alive”
Lately I have been pondering this difference and wondered about your thoughts on this too…
If I were to take it back to a basic premise: We “live” through the involuntary actions of our body that moves us from awake states to rest states. No matter how long we stay awake, eventually our body ostensibly puts itself into rest. It is almost involuntary in some way.
We drink when we are thirsty, eat when we are hungry and cry or laugh in response to stimuli. This is a very basic idea but in essence, many of these functions of “living” are fairly automatic. We could even say we have to go to a fair amount of effort and energy to decide NOT to be living. For the most part, our bodies just keep on living until such time as they run out of puff and they die.
I have been noticing lately the difference between “living” in this automatic way (“ie I have woken up and therefore I am living”) versus really embracing “being Alive” (ie I am awake inside my body and immersed in my aliveness”).
This moment caught my attention when I was sitting in the shallows of the ocean. I was struck by the beauty of the light hitting the ocean, the colours of the water on the shoreline and the warmth of the water on my skin.
In that moment I felt ALIVE.
The moments prior to getting into the ocean I had felt like a bit of an automaton. I had walked from my home to the beach in that preoccupied state where I couldn’t really recall the walk to the beach at all. My living body got me to the beach but only once my body landed in the ocean did I actually come ALIVE.
We can so easily fall asleep in our lives, in our work, in our relationships. This takes us back to just “living” like simple organisms when we get into that state.
It is easy to do especially when sometimes life feels emotionally full or feels like it is going at hyperspeed at times. There are many lost moments when we may be living but not alive.
I felt the potency and value in consciously and intentionally making a shift to aliveness more often. Tell me about your shifts too x
Warmly,
Mel
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