24
votes
When do you feel the most alive?
Time for this week’s question that allows me to people-watch from the comfort of my own home in my pajamas.
Intentionally ambiguous. Interpret as you wish.
Time for this week’s question that allows me to people-watch from the comfort of my own home in my pajamas.
Intentionally ambiguous. Interpret as you wish.
Alone, walking through the woods early in the morning. Virtually any time I am by myself and fully self sufficient is the only time I feel absolutely self-actualized.
Likewise! It's odd, isn't it.. the further removed from signs of life, the more alive I feel. There's something about being surrounded by nature that takes the pressure away..
The time I felt the most alive was when I was out in the middle of nowhere on a long walk and a thunderstorm rolled in. All that raw energy and the feeling of "Holy shit, my life might end right now." Intense.
I never felt as alive as when I took a box of anxiolytics and tried to commit suicide by throwing myself in the pool. I soon realized I fucking love breathing. Been breathing ever since.
Glad you’re still here mate. Keep on breathing.
Nowadays the idea of suicide is so distant and weak it pose no threat to me. But I’m always on the lookout.
I really like biking around, going as fast as I can, working my legs and feeling the wind in my face. I need to do it more often, honestly.
Sadly it's probably the "eureka" moments I get from solving well-designed puzzles or riddles in games like The Witness, Statik, or Professor Layton. If there was a line of work I could pursue that's nothing but those moments, I'd be all about it.
Study Mathematics.
Same, nothing like getting two pieces of equipment older than my brother to talk to one another through a specialty part that went out of production years ago, installing Linux on it, and making it available on the home network with a web interface. Pornhub could make a mint if they put hosted those sorts of videos.
When I visit live music shows and I'm in the middle of a crowd towards the middle of the show. Where you're tired from moving but still energized by your excitement at still having the second half of a show to enjoy. You're surrounded by people who hopefully love the music as much as you and you're bonding with them over that, that you're all there to enjoy it together.
Usually there's a zen moment I have when I really get to appreciate it and can feel the smile forming on my face. It's pure bliss.
The early morning hours on a Sunday, when the sky is mostly dark but there's a glow on the horizon. It feels like all the world's potential is in my sight at that moment, like the promise of a new and interesting day. (As for Sunday... that's the day I get things done. Shopping, socializing with friends, things like that.)
Early in the morning, in the garden, turning earthy, fecal, decaying composting material or slowly searching the tomato plants for fat, green tobacco worms to feed to the chickens, I feel the overwhelming truth that you can't have life without death, and I'm in standing the middle of living and dying, the dead nourishing the living, and I'm just one of the trillions of living. Knowing that I'm both a member and a host of this community makes me feel really alive.
This is a pretty new lifestyle for me, living out in the country and doing these things, but I think it's where my family is going to keep living. Being in nature is something I now know I crave, so being able to walk outside and experience it has been great for my well being.
Years ago, a colleague of mine imprudently but insightfully described being a scientist, to some high school students visiting our lab, as being similar to being a drug addict. Having experienced the high that comes from discovering something, or figuring something out, one is left desperately searching for the high again, from a drug that can't be purchased and only appears infrequently and unreliably after grueling labour and myriad failures.
It's an accurate representation of a certain sort of scientist----those of us who see science as a vocation in the traditional sense----and I have gradually realized that it describes me quite well. That excitement of the moment when one realizes and understands something that no one else in the world has ever known, when some part of the universe reveals itself to you through your cleverness, is without comparison. It is in those moments that I most feel alive, and I desperately search for them, to the detriment of many other things.
Outside of that feeling, I feel most alive when I am with my wife. Though in completely different fields, we both love knowledge, and being so close to each other we are able to constantly have conversations about everything, each always being fascinated by the insights the other can give.
Exploring on a motorcycle or bicycle, preferably through foreign countries. Nothing has put a smile on my face quite like riding through the country side of New Zealand or (respectfully) offroading through Laos.
When I thought about my mother possibly dying from cancer (she was diagnosed last year), I realized that even though I'd be completely heartbroken and devastated, I wouldn't want to do anything but keep going. Suicide is just not an option for me, no matter how hard things get.
In life-threatening situations, but I think that's innate in everyone.