Discovering the real you

It’s a time when none of us know if we’ll be here in four week’s time. That of course is always true but we plough onwards assuming we will live for decades, and decades we may have before us, but today with young people dying, we are faced with our own mortality.

To think that this extraordinary person sitting next to me, whose character is so strong and whose mind is so alive, who has so much to give and who has given so much, could end. All her history, all the things she has gathered from her family, from their compound history, from her friends, from work, from life itself, and then nothing. That is impossible to think of. Awful to face.

It’s why we invented religions, to give us a sense that things are OK beyond the inevitability of our ending. It all only seems meaningless because we can think and mull over it all. If we couldn’t, life would plod along, we’d still be munching twigs or whatever it was we did before we began to put two and two together, to reflect, to plan and to create the lives we wanted.

Inhabiting our ordered minds we face this invisible threat with fear, which makes our days (our last?) fill with tension. Fear, stress, the desire to control is good, but once we have done as much as we possible can, what then? Continue with fear tingling inside? It is better, if we can possible do so, to try and make the most of the time we have here upon this extraordinary planet.

That means moving from our impressive rational minds and into our brains so we can sense as acutely as possible, the way our senses interact with the world around us. That is to be alive, to be in the moment and if we can learn to maintain it for a while a profound calmness comes with it. This Corona period when all the craziness and the garbage of human activity has been vastly slowed, is thus a gift accidentally handed to us and which we can use to find our way back to being ourselves.

Yes, we are all those thoughts, emotions, memories, histories and more, but we are also somebody who has been ignored. We are a being which is alive, vibrantly so, somebody who is electric, zinging, alert, awake. This Covid period allows us to find that person. And this character will be strong and enable us to face our unknown futures.

Setting up this route to ourselves begins the second we wake up. Eyes closed, stretch, fully involved in the physicality of this transition from the unconscious. Once you have relished this joyous immersion, eyes still shut, amble through your senses: feel the regenerative oxygen rushing into your lungs; your skin registering the world; listen with intent; pop open the windows to your soul and take in the light, the shapes, the textures and colours.

Ha!

This is life!

Can you sense your other more subtle being beneath the usually busy self you’ve thus far assumed is you?

Don’t rush as you rise to wash, dress, drink and eat, but delight in this understated self interacting with the immediate world. You can now rediscover this refreshed environment you inhabit, flirt with it and with your astute, vibrant self.

Yes, this IS living. Throughout the day, treat yourself to these magical moments.