Recently I was speaking with my Brother and I asked him, "How do you know you're alive?" "And I'm not asking about your pulse and heartbeat," I said, to qualify and perhaps highlight the seriousness of my question. "Really," I asked, "how do you know you're alive?"
This is a question for him, for me, for everyone. Sometimes I am not aware that I'm alive, or, for that matter, that I'm dead. In these moments I am a zombie, repeating habitual behaviors or thinking about doing something differently and then coming up with reasons to not do so...staying the same, playing it "safe," hiding.
Today, I knew I was alive by the sensations I experienced, by the things I did and did not do, by actively choosing what I did. I did not follow a routine of learned behaviors. I felt fear, and I kept moving, not knowing where I was going.
Here I share some of the essence of it, in video format, uncut.
A litany of thoughts and considerations came and come. The fat on my stomach - this is bad and not for people to see. A visceral, though lessening, reaction as I see in the thumbnail of the video that I do not have a flat or muscular chest. "It looks like I have small breasts, this is not the way a man looks," I've thought with disgust. I look a bit flabby. Other people's imagined voices: "He's really let himself go." People's eyes, their thoughts. Someone might think I'm on drugs...or gay, dancing like this. Someone might honk a car horn at me. Or, maybe some people think I'm pretty cool and wish they were dancing, too. "People" might think all of these things. Also, these voices and phrases are all bullshit, excuses for me to stay still. They are not useful. All of these traumas and decisions and projections from long ago can shape the world still for me at the age of 34, keeping me dead. In this moment, and this one, and this one, I push these stories and projections to the side and hold them at a distance.
Alive. I am alive in motion. This time in human history might just be about how to stay alive and awake. A tall order, no doubt.
Sometimes, to be alive we must dive into the deep, dark places. We must do the things that were once the most humiliating things we could imagine. We must dance. We must sing. We do the things we want to do but have not for all our clever "reasons." Reasons: ways to stay small and the same that we've convinced ourselves are really, really good and just oh, so right.
Doing the things that we fear, and actually want to do, is distinct from doing the things that we don't want to do and still do. This is the territory of the responsible victim: someone who does something they actually don't want to do because "someone has to do it." It can take the form of: "I have to go visit my family because it's how it goes, plus they'll get upset. Maybe they'll cut me out of the family and then I'll die." "I'll stay with my husband because he would fall apart on his own, plus he's always handled the finances." "I'll pick up this trash on the street because other stupid people are going to keep throwing it there." "I'll stay at this job because I can't be lazy, and, besides, if everyone just left their jobs, what would the world be like?" "Surely if I keep doing what I'm doing, things will get better, yes? I'm doing my best."
I just started moving, after hesitating for a bit. "Maybe the side of the road isn't the best place for this," I said with my mind. Instead of heeding this reasonability, I danced. Cars and cyclists come by. Emotions come...Anger. "Hello," I say without words. I know not the source of the anger, and keep moving. I notice what I notice as I move in me and outside of me. I think of Malidoma Somé, who invited me and others into ritual, to do something surprising in the space, so as not to wake up in Groundhog Day, same shit different toilet, as he at least once said. In this moment in the Santa Monica mountains, next to the road, I did something to surprise even myself - who cares where this movement comes from, I'm moving. If anger comes up, I'll ride it; I'll keep going, I won't push it underground.
Alive. I am alive in motion...We must dance. We must sing.
I'm not sure I ever really know the sequence of events that bring me alive. Sometimes I suddenly find myself there, and I know not to try to figure out why I'm there, when I'm there. Clinton Callahan has said before, "why would you ever leave that place [of aliveness]?" A call to pay attention. Once I come alive, what kills me again? One way could be thinking about, "how did I get to be so alive?" instead of just being alive! Humans, we sure are clever.
Music is moving me these days. My guitar playing is still pretty mechanical as I learn how to make the guitar talk, and with it, find my truer voice. My deep voice that I was born with, that I've been meant to live into all these years. With the drums I can have a conversation. And that conversation is what got me moving today. I was playing the drums and realized I needed my anger to play some fast and loud parts that I was trying to bring from imagination into the physical. So often in life, I collapse. "It's too hard." "I should have done this when I was younger." "I'll do it later." "It's not that important anyway, I'll have a snack." When I feel my anger and allow its energy, I can see things through, talk with someone even when I am afraid to do so, move when others stand still, run the extra mile, catch the next wave, overpower a threat, get into cold water. Otherwise, I am left with guilting myself, "should-ing" myself, or reinforcing stories of inferiority or superiority. These "strategies" are unsustainable and serve to continually stifle my life force. Whenever I say I "should" do something, I am choosing to allow the voices of others to run my life.
One of the most important things we humans can do is to be alive. When we are alive, we spread aliveness. We change the world when we are alive by being alive. I can embody and flow with a living world when I am alive - in these moments everything is alive, and I know it without a doubt. I do not really know this when I am dead. I am theorizing about something I'm not experiencing.
How do you know you're alive?
