The Adventure of Life Rediscovered
When I was a child I’d wake up in the morning with a sensation of slight tingling in my tummy. This was simple, innocent excitement I felt about life. For a child each new day was an exciting adventure waiting to be experienced. Small things were big, as everything was filled with significance. Both joy and sadness were felt in full intensity.
As I grew up I lost this way of experiencing life. I dulled the inevitable emotional pains I encountered with endless distractions. Along with the pain I lost my ability to feel joy. Slowly I lost the connection to my body, to my emotions and to my sense of purpose. Days started to seem monotone, colours more gray; things lost their significance and became humdrum. I gave up on my dreams, thinking that someone as mediocre as myself could never achieve them and thus, I shouldn’t even try. I became passive, cynical and nihilistic.
The fire within me had almost died out. I was about to be but an empty automaton.
But within this dull emptiness, some sparks persisted — desire for a life more fulfilling and exciting than the one I was living. These sparks silently demanded to be kept alive; faint dreams whispering their need to be manifested. This will to live was trying to tear through the crippling perceptions I had of myself and of the world around me.
I was in a state of inner contradiction.
As a result of this silent anguish, I ended up making life choices that laid on a rather irrational basis. And since those foundations were not solid, things that I built on them eventually collapsed down.
This collapse began once I gained a glimpse into the richness that exists within my inner landcapes. This realization of my internal depth began the slow process of “know thyself”. Part of this process was the rejection and elimination of those elements in my life that were not aligned with who I really was and who I wanted to be.
In other words: my inner contradictions were starting to dissolve themselves. And because so much of my outer, conscious life hadn’t been in line with my inner, unconscious life — by necessity my dry life caught fire once the sparks within me bursted into flames.
While this breakdown of the path I had imagined for myself was emotionally painful — well, outright depressive — in the end the experience turned out to be a liberating and life affirming one. For when I found myself standing on the ashes of the life I had thought I’d be living, I came to realize that I had been born again. I was like a baby phoenix, seeing the world through renewed eyes.
And one day, the feeling I had completely forgotten for so many years came back.
I was alone in the small woods, nearby where I live, and quietly daydreaming of the possibilities my future life could be holding for me. I smelled the moist moss around me. I heard the vibrant singing of birds from the surrounding trees. I felt on my face the cool autumn air; beneath me the strudiness of the fallen tree trunk on which I was sitting. My sight was relaxedly traveling over the peaceful scenery, occasionally my attention being caught by some beautiful detail I happened to saw.
Suddenly it was there.
A slight tingling in my tummy.
The joyful excitement over experiencing this adventure called “life”.
