A few years ago The Grasshopper offered up this nip of nectar: “The purpose of being alive is to feel alive.”

It immediately brought up the contrast between existing and living. I’ve done both and living is the hands-down winner.

This goes past upside and downside; they are facts of life – yin and yang – push and pull. Like the poor, they will always be with us.

But both rich and poor have a choice to feel alive no matter what side of up or down they happen to be experiencing.

Feeling alive is feeling. Notice the period after the previous sentence.

We can feel when we are up and we can feel when we are down. Some people bypass their feelings whether up or down. They rarely celebrate even when the upside is present, and they do a lot of talking (complaining) when the downside has the floor. But in neither case do they feel. That’s why they feel dead.

Take time to notice what your body is feeling and you have tapped into your aliveness. We’re alive when we exalt and we’re alive when we cry. We are in limbo when we dismiss or attempt to overpower those feelings with the stoicism of logic or the escapism of denial.

You can’t think your way out of a feeling. It will always be there ready to let you know you are alive. You just have to give it some attention instead of pretending it’s not there.

Remember this: Thoughts are often illusions but feel is always real.

Take the time to feel. It has the Lazarus Effect; it brings you back from the dead.

All the best,

John