I insist on aliveness

I insist on the aliveness of love—the expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction, explosion, leveling of all that was known… And then, a quiet. Whether silent shaking sorrow or the wordless calm of acceptance, the wake of love can be quiet in its appearance.

When I am most alive it can look like stagnation. Oh, but you should see my soul vibrating in those moments. When I am most alive it can look like avoidance, yet the churn below the surface swells my senses.

Caution is required here, because what looks like avoidance can also BE avoidance. How can I be true to my heart and kind to those I am trying to love by insisting on the kind of aliveness that does not run away? Every time I avoid, it adds another wound to my story. Every time I avoid aliveness I try to notice quicker, remember the wound, tend to myself and others with that kindness. My gawd I’m trying.

The feel of letting that phrase roll over my heart down to my bones. Oh, how we take in something after it takes our breath away. The phrase rings not in my ears but in my skin as a prickly awareness.

I know a lovely someone who asks strangers questions like “what is home?” and captures their answers with equal parts curiosity and empathy. A related question is now on my mind, one I’d love to ask nearly everyone I have ever met and never will:

What is aliveness?

Point the camera, press the red button of on-the-record and wait. What would these folks say when removed from thoughts of what is expected and invited into a different forest of experience? What would they say, indeed.

What would you say aliveness is, to you? The scent of water in your nose from the time it felt like you might drown? The feeling of running your palms over a field of flowers? The look in your lover’s eyes as they plunge deeply into yours? The leap in your heart the moment a song brings you to tears? Coming out of a dream where you finally got to see geologic time? Sitting with the dying in all of their mess?

Tell me yours. I’ve just told you mine.

I insist on aliveness — words inspired by Raechel Anne Jolie.