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living is…
So I should just live?
What then is ‘living’?
I am a-live. This is the defining quality of living beings.
I have a life - delimited by a known beginning in the past and an unknown but certain end at some point in the future.
And I am life - as a part of life on Earth, of the planetary web of life.
Being alive, having a life, being life. These are the constitutive givens of my existence. Nothing much to be done about it.
Instead, ‘living’! ‘Living’ takes another perspective. It seems to hold a promise. Here is where life is happening. This is the colourful, varied, messy, beautiful, painful process of it all.
Living, yes, relentlessly unreels the future, happens for but the fleeting moment, and, unstoppable, turns into past. That fleeting moment is all I have to live with. I have it now. There is a diminishing chance I will have another one and another one and….
In the vast expanses of the web of life, of the billions of other human beings, of the unimaginable number of living beings, this, my tiny bit of living, is there somewhere between nothing and next to nothing. Awe and modesty are called for.
And yet, and yet, and yet… there is a flip side: I can take the courage to put these paltry bits of living into the ‘my perspective’. Be the little speck! Claim it! Own it! From my perspective it is everything. Celebrate it! Tend it! Embrace and love it! Unashamedly. While alive I cannot not be living anyway.
I can take this ‘living’ as a creative act, the creative act of bringing this life of mine into existence every new moment - and to accept that I have to lose it again right away to live the next moment. I have some influence over how I live. Probably not as much influence as I would like to but still, there is some space for giving shape to my life, form it, design it to a degree.
How do I live this tension between being totally insignificant and being my significant totality?
Reminders help. I recall the day of the Venus transit in June 2004. Some astronomy buffs had set up telescopes in a public park. Seeing the small black dot make its way across the bright disc of the sun, the dimensions and proportions of the solar system literally jumped at me. Spending time on Montserrat for a pension policy project, I was taken to one of the higher points of the island. Seeing the ocean stretch out in all directions with no other land in sight was even a bit unsettling. And each and every clear night away from the bright lights of the city is an opportunity to gaze at the stars and let myself find a moment of calm.
That is the insignificance side of it but what about the creative act of shaping the moments that unroll from the reel of live? Where I am the significant actor to either leave an imprint on the reel or to let it pass - lived but unlived?
How do I handle this? Can I handle this? Do I see life’s chain of moments like one of those tennis training machines that just keep firing new balls? Or like a walk on which I direct my steps at the speed I choose? Maybe like the kayaking trips of my youth. On the river the current can be slow, but there are rapids, too. I can let myself drift or use the paddles. I have to negotiate weirs and other obstacles. On white water being alert and having the arm strength and skill to interact with the water is everything. All it takes to be moving relative to the current is to marginally change the flow of water. But that move it takes!
Living in the rapids of life needs being alert. Being present. Being there. Being here.
Creative living may not mean more than to marginally change the flow of life, one moment at a time. But that move it takes!