Some jobs are simple. There is clear doing. And clear completion. Take out the trash. Do the dishes. Make the bed.
Some jobs are more involved. There isn’t meant to be a clear finish line. It doesn’t exist. Yet it is useful to notice. “Be fully alive” as named by Michael Meade above is one of those.
Being fully alive sometimes looks like being a keen noticer. Sometimes it is welcoming feeling. Sometimes it is experimenting with a new habit. Sometimes it is following the guidance of friends. Sometimes it is getting up to dance and move our bodies. Sometimes it is sticking with habits. Sometimes it is breaking norms. Sometimes it is starting anew. Sometimes it is choosing when enough metabolizing is enough metabolizing.
There is much in the “fully alive” category of practices. “Fully alive” is a bit scary to me. Almost too big? But doing and being that creates “alive energy” — yup, this one moves me in very kind ways. Shifts the story from a “thing of accomplishing” to an “energetic of being”. I suppose that very notion — shifting from a thing to an energetic of being — that’s bringing my alive a bunch now. With people I love or am coming to love. With groups I’ve been working with or am starting to work with. With making room for mystery to best friend. With the welcome of Life to live in and through me with hints and invitations galore.
Yes to aliveness. Whatever it’s dose. Yes to the surprise of aliveness, merely because I, or we, are welcoming it — like daffodils poking through the Spring ground. Yes to the welcome of aliveness in mystery — perhaps that is the most simple starting place.
Into a day.
‘Shifts the story from a “thing of accomplishing” to an “energetic of being.”’
Ah, yes. An ongoing recalibration for me. Kind of like shifting from doing to being. I like thinking of the “real” doing in simple tasks like making the bed, sweeping the floor, taking out the recycling. 😉
And, always, I think of the *being* as something in the moment. This present moment. Because that puts me back in the heart of things, back into the essence of who I am, who I am becoming.
And that, for me, is where I want to both rest and reside.