What makes us feel Alive? thoughts at Little Harbor

Sunset and moonset at Little Harbor in Catalina.

It's when I feel happiest --- when I feel most alive.  But what exactly is this feeling of aliveness..?

Not necessarily when I'm energetic; I can be very calm.  I'm just content and full of life. Aliveness seems to be contagious. Enthusiasm, joy, and beauty in others can raise our energy levels.

Even an incredible vista can send a surge of life into our bodies. Some places seem to be pulsing with life force -- a lush jungle with a harmony of animal noises, a majestically silent desert, or a sheltered cove erupting in sunset colors. 

It is like the writer whose words "come alive" in a piece of paper and turn text into moving stories. 

Aliveness is a key to feeling good and general wellbeing. Yet, we forget about this simple truth when it comes to restoration and recovery. 

A stroke victim - or a landscape ravished by goats - can have a dead and numb feeling. We try to "fix" each of its components that got "broken". Recovery, however, is not about fixing something. It is about creating the right conditions for life to flow back into a person or place, as it naturally wants to. 

How alive and full of vitality do we feel today, compared to our final years in college? Compared to a memorable vacation? Compared to when we saw a humpback whale for the first time? We have a sense of what the answers may be. We may not be able to measure it - but we can try to understand and improve it. 

What affects Aliveness?  Like yin and yang, there are two sides to the coin: 

1. Lifeforce is the positive, creative side. It is abundance and diversity - whether of animals, of thoughts, or ideas. It is excitement, new technology, and imagination. But... it can also create its anti-thesis, Waste, as we end up with "too much of a good thing".
2. Waste is the negative, destructive side.  Waste is by definition non-useful and potentially harmful. As a by-product of creative energy, it is a fact of life, and should be accepted. In fact, if managed skillfully, dealing with waste can generate more creativity and Lifeforce, feeding the cycle. Otherwise, it can dramatically reduce Aliveness. 

To feel content and full of life, we need to enhance our opportunities for Lifeforce (e.g. having a meaningful career, having kids, doing exciting things, planting a garden) and we need to wisely manage our Waste (e.g. not over-spending, not over-eating unhealthy foods, having a bad attitude). 

Those same principles are in play - whether we are recovering from trauma or in the restoration of traumatized landscapes. The great thing is that what we learn from one, we can apply to the other. 

Little Harbor Sunset from Kristian Beadle on Vimeo.