Being alive
We keep ourselves stuck with how and why questions. How am I to live? How am I to get people to love me the way I want them to? How am I do get where I want to go in my career? Why am I where I am? Why do people in my world act and think the way they do?
Joseph Campbell’s spin: I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. Looking for the meaning of life is looking for the how and why. Being alive is about saying yes to what makes us feel most alive. The answer to how and why is yes.
What makes you feel alive?
April 29th, 2005 23:57
Oh, yes! You have touched on a key topic. Thank you for bringing me to attention. Your tidbits are always timely.
April 30th, 2005 00:13
And in answer to your question, these things make me feel alive.
April 30th, 2005 06:29
Yet another example of the differentiating of living as a have’r, do’er, and be’er. It is always in the questions: How can I get …. and How do I …
Campbell goes to How am I being …
April 30th, 2005 07:28
The physical and mental exhaustion after a couple hours fencing, or the physical exhaustion after a night of salsa dancing. Those make me feel alive.
Oh, and a big bar of Lindt Dark Chocolate and no one to share it with.
April 30th, 2005 10:06
Jack, I have taken to awakening daily (physically and spiritually) to your thoughts. Thank you
I had never taken to reading blogs before reading yours and Lois’s (heart@work).
Lauren
May 2nd, 2005 03:20
Two things make me feel alive. The first is working with my horse. He got a little out of hand today, and I got REAL present to him on a non-verbal, intuitive, level. (He is such a reminder of being present and bieng nonjudgemental.)
The second is playing music in an ensemble. I am a very good player of a powerful instrument, and making music - joyful, semi-improvistory - with friends is another thing.
Both of these remind me a Thomas Merton quote that I saw on a A Mindful Life:
By being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen which cannot be learned any more than breathing), we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained; the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations. –Thomas Merton
May 2nd, 2005 06:20
Great quote Dave, thanks. A good reminder about the “unexplained happiness.”