“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Not the most light-hearted of Oscar Wilde’s quips perhaps, but for me one of the most resonant. Too many of us spend our lives ‘existing’ rather than ‘living’.
Ask anyone how they are and more often than not you will get a response of “fine” or “I’m ok” or “mustn’t grumble” or “not so bad". Or maybe they’ll tell you that they’re busy or working hard or “well, you know…” and you probably do. You probably know exactly where they’re coming from. Unless there is something specifically and seriously wrong in which case they might tell you they’re “not so good” or something positively life-changing has just happened to have them dancing on air, in which case of course they’ll share the good news: a promotion, a win, a wedding – or a divorce!, a baby, a new job, a new home…
As Billy Joel put it “it’s either sadness or euphoria”.
But what about the gaps in between? What about all that space between disaster and glory? Are we just being polite when we say we’re “fine” or “ok” assuming that the other person doesn’t really want to know? If that’s so, then I’d rather they didn’t ask.
Or is that for much of the time we are just “ok”? Not up, not down, just…meh…existing, not living.
Sadly, I think that is true.
I know that for a lot of people it is literally true, and that many of them don’t have a choice about it. Continued existence is itself an achievement: finding the next meal, avoiding the next threat, staying alive through another day. Yet, I suspect that many of them feel far more alive than many of the rest of us. I suspect that they notice small blessings that pass us by…and not just because to them they are huge blessings.
The thing we miss is that they are huge blessings to all of us. We don’t wake up in the morning and feel joy that we have woken up, we’re still here. We don’t open the curtains and look at the sky and think wow: the sun is still burning. Or the rain is still falling. Or the clouds, when you really bother to look at them are not just awesome at recycling water, they’re also rather beautiful.
Maybe we should.
Too many of us set out to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay (if we’re lucky) and don’t appreciate our ability to do the one or the facility of getting the latter. We just get through the day, get the job done, try not to moan too much about our co-workers, bosses, suppliers, clients. Just another day at the office. We don’t stop to think about the miracle of the office: the technology that works more often that it doesn’t – when did you last go home and tell your partner: you’ll never guess what: the IT system worked brilliantly today, did everything I needed it to do, not a hitch? We don’t appreciate the kindness of the cup of tea or the ad hoc ‘you could try…’ kind of unspecific help.
I’m not talking about gratitude. That’s a whole other lesson we could learn. I’m just talking about noticing.
Noticing what is around us and how it came to be there, is the first step towards living rather than existing. Only when we notice the planet and the people and the plants and the animals and the infrastructure and the technology and the art and the culture and the beliefs and the history and story-telling and the newsgathering and the ability to learn and to know and to not know…only when we pay attention can we begin to live.
To live means to engage with what is around us. To love it…or to challenge it…or just to accept it for what it is. To nurture it…or to change it…or to see both the blessing and the curse in it. To live means to understand that we are not separate from it; we are part of it. Part of the problem, part of the solution, definitely one or the other and maybe both, but never neither.
To live, rather than simply to exist, means to notice whatever it is that makes you feel alive. Hold that feeling, relish it. If you can take it and do something with it, so much the better, but at the very least feel it.
Right now I’m watching the downpour outside my window…more frequent storms, more flooding, the big picture does not escape me. And I know that I am both part of that problem and want to be part of the solution. Closer to home, I’m thinking about leaking roof to the storeroom, and the overflowing gutters. Problems that I can solve. Neither of these things have me loving the rain in the moment…despite having spent a great deal of the summer hoping to see some. It’s come too late for some of the plants, there are dead dried-out things that I’ll get around to cutting back soon enough. It's almost certainly come too heavy for others. But the garden is alive, the garden will find its own balance and I will learn want thrives and what survives…and what doesn’t.
And yet…really…when I stop thinking and start feeling I do love rain. I'll admit to not be overly fond of being out in it for too long, especially in the colder months, but I love the sound of it, the sight of it, the smell of it, and yes – at times, the touch and taste of it. Rain sparks memories – of schooldays, of camping trips, of long sodden hikes and steamy cafés or freezing hostels at the end of them. Rain makes the world smell clean-again. Rain washed earth smells not of damp or decay but of green and growth. When it falls gentle enough to be listened to through an open summer-night window, there is romance promised in its lying whispers. Any time when it falls straight, not wind-blown, you’ll find me by an open door watching it make puddles on the terrace, worrying slightly about how soon it will make the wood rot, and wondering if it will stop long enough for me to rein in the rampaging growth in the back field. I'll notice the reflections in rockery stones and the ripples in the birdbath. I'll stretch out an arm to let it wash over me, briefly…and I’ll feel alive. I’ll, for the moment, forget about the leaks and pooling, and the work to follow, and I’ll smile.
I am not saying that anyone should feel about rain the way I do, but I do think finding out what it is that makes us feel that way and seeking it out or pausing to notice when it passes by takes us a step closer to living rather than existing.
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