...on being alive!

My dearest readers,

before my journey to Wisconsin a good friend gave me a book about being balanced in a chaotic world, which I considered a satirical allusion to the rush I experience and the fast life I certainly live every day—which she, more than most of my friends, is overtly aware of. After skimming through the pages the section on “Living in the Moment” immediately caught my eye, because it is not only a great method of balancing one’s life when reaching for the stars and making dreams come true but further a great enhancement of the way I opened the 2014 discourse: as an adventure.

An adventure is a great example of a situation in which you are caught in the moment, the ‘now’ aside from a before or after, because an adventure happens in its present and is experienced within the here and now. Jim Ballard writes: “People spend much of their lives futurizing, and thereby rob themselves of their native aliveness, self-expression, and joy.” As the previous post suggested, do we actively control a big part of our happiness, which is control, authority, and agency we can easily give up as soon as we place our self-expression and enjoyment, our happiness in the past or the future. Therefore, remain in control and own this experience, your adventure, and live it to the fullest, because there is only one person to control and own this adventure of life: you!

In earlier posts I dealt multiple times with the past, especially taking heart from past accomplishments and rewards and ultimately carrying this new-found encouragement and self-consciousness you drew out of it into the future where—with foresight—you are tackling new challenges. Those, in fact, are great methods to stay motivated and keep the focus on your achievements, when doing so, however, do not get caught up in the past or the future if it diminishes the moment, because you only live in the present. And you are to enjoy the present, the now, and live in the moment, and for the moment, because happiness can only be perceived and experienced in the present. There is happiness you can remember from early days, and there may be, or in fact is happiness you anticipate and work for in the future, but experiencing happiness you can only do when it is present, in the now, when you live in the moment.

In the tempest of time, where past and future pull you in all kind of directions, do not drown in the torrents of time at your own expense. Keep a balance not only in your life with whatever you do but also maintain a balance of experience, where you do draw inspiration from the past and keep an eye on the future, but be present and alive and happy in the present, now, not yesterday, not tomorrow, but now, in the moment, the moment in which you are to live. Your life then, ultimately, becomes an adventure in which you are free from thinking about what may come next, but grab whatever is coming next by the horns and live it, experience it, and live it in the moment. This moment? You own it!

Let life be an adventure, let it be your adventure…or nothing, for that will determine whether you are dead or live in the moment, for the moment, live your life here, and now; and it will make you eventually feel what so many people fail to feel and to be: alive!