Oy yoy yoy

It is so crazy to me that we are already a quarter way’s through 2024. A former co-worker hit me up last week—randomly, the way I like it—just expressing his revelations concerning being alive versus living.

It hit home with me. My current projects are heavily centered around the notion that we should be intentional about living. Being alive is simply a circumstance of being born. You exist. You have a body that is biologically functional to whatever degree. However, living?

Living has a nuance that furthers your aliveness. Even as a noun, living holds a connotation of specificity, lifestyle, and excess. Alive describes a state of existence, living describes the point of that existence.

How often do you think about the life you are living? Are you actively creating a life or do you just exist? Long time ago…

A long time ago, when I was toiling for ‘the man,’ the graveyard crew would sit and politick during downtime. One night, we were discussing poetry but the conversation evolved into a barometer of life. I vividly remember one co-worker. At that time, she was about the age I am now. While I didn’t know everything about her personal life, I knew she’d had a couple rocky situationships which led her to shoo romance in general and focus on her son—her only child.

Debra (which ain’t her real name) wasn’t a prude, like myself. She was just an older adult who did not delve into grown-young folk bidness. But this night, the conversation made its rounds. We asked her about her preferences. What she liked to read? Did she partake in poetry? Was she a magazine, look at the pictures until the doctor calls you in the office, type person, or what?

She turned around, thinking about the question. Then almost immediately there was a scowl on her face. She said, “I’m too busy working and paying bills to be worried about reading anything.” I know at least four of us did a soft triple-take, round the world, heavy-hard, quiet sigh.

We all basically surrendered the conversation at that point. The sadness she released drug over us all. Did she say she was sad? No. Did she sound sad? No. What I saw in that scowl, though, was more than contemplation and that me, us, sad. That scowl betrayed her. She may have meant her words, but she is not at peace with their meaning.

I understand if my story of Debra sounds presumptuous. It is, because I am. However, is a life that’s relegated to paying bills and raising a son, really a life at all? More to the point, is it living? Of course, I am not saying raising children isn’t a hootin’ tootin’ heck of a good time 😑. I am asking, however, can that qualify as living.

We have options. We can exist. We can survive. Or, we can thrive. There isn’t much effort needed to exist. You may not proactively seek to do more in life, but you’re cogging in the machine as steady as can be. Survival, though, that takes skills. Survival requires a proactive approach to staying afloat. Survival mode creates circumstances that often disengages us from the well-intended living we plan or would like to do.

Oh but then there’s thriving. Just like privilege, it doesn’t mean you experience life without challenges or hardships. It does mean that the circumstances within your life allow room for you to make goals that can be accomplished, desire things that can be acquired, and truly lose yourself in the living of your life.

Eh, but who gets to decide what living is to someone else, anyway? If the idea of living is a subjective one, it ranges and changes for every person assessing it. Like so many things, it wraps back around to “to each its own.”

Ion accept that at all #doe.

In fact, I believe the tell is easy. That night, at work, we—the twentysomethings—were muddling about in our youth and naivete. We were looking for something in a conversation about poetry and found it wrapped in the scowl of a seasoned adult. Something like a warning. Something like a life that had experienced plenty of existing but far too little thriving. While none of us could be sure of what was on her heart that night, some 20 years later, I am positive the perspective she carried was the motivation behind the scowl.

It may never be the existence itself that tells the tale. We all have different life influences, circumstances, and challenges which create odds seemingly never in our favor. Just a rush of activity and emotions clouding our existence as we zombie two-step from moment to moment. On the other side of that, there are some of us, who may never know the odds at all. What life presents us is comfortable enough to coddle us through the moments. Even though someone has it better in life, if they are living mindlessly, can that still be called living?

We often hear that life goes on. Maybe it would resonate more if we said, “existence goes on.” Because not all of us doing much more than that.

It’s hard outchea.

I propose that it is not the circumstances, possessions (material or experienced), accolades, or titles we accumulate that determines our living. I purport it is our intent. It is the mindful awareness of who we are and the intentional behavior we exhibit to craft and become who we want to be that coils round and round creating a lived existence.

Whatever moment you are in as you read this (thanks, by the way.), will you move into the next moment with intent? Do you have an overarching goal, purpose, or call on your existence that creates the motivation to be dogged in your pursuit of living? Hey, I’m just presenting the questions. How you choose to live is up to you.

Dew

love&light

SomeTing to Read & Think About

I read this book in ninth grade. It resonated with me because the main character drifts from moment to moment reveling in his truth—regardless of the effect it has on others. While doing so proves to ensure his demise, it is not until he is on trial for murder that his indifference has morphed into a silent rage of the very absurdism he spends most of the book projecting on to others.

It’s that type of dichotomy, that type of full circle existentialism that I find interesting about us, as human beings. Simple, fallible, human beings. That’s just what I think. What are your thoughts?

SomeTing to Hear

All Is Well by Daisha McBride (@the_rapgirl)

If we’ve met, you know that I’m picky about my music. While I listen to all types, to be clear, I listen to all types of good music. I don’t need it to be super polished or produced by some mega producer. I do need it to be authentic and genuine.

This young lady captured my ear with her blowout single, Birds. “This sh!t’s for the birds,” she reminds us. Love. Failure. Disappointment. It can all go quietly into the night and sit squarely in the middle midnight club traffic.

Her next song, All is Well, hits home considering our “living” discussion up top. This song puts into perspective just how thin the lines between existing, surviving, and thriving actually are. Take a listen. Tell me what you think.