What makes us feel alive

My photo, April 2015

I love early spring, this time in early March when most trees are still leafless but the buds and catkins are starting to appear on the branches and suddenly there’s an explosion of delicate blossom everywhere, lacy clouds of pink and white, blackthorn and prunus. I love the purple and white and gold carpets of crocuses, the golden bells of the daffodils, the first primroses. I love how alive spring makes me feel.

This morning I happened to come across this post, ‘Navigating by Aliveness’, on Oliver Burkeman’s blog The Imperfectionist. https://ckarchive.com/b/zlughnhk8772ma7qrr9qehwzgng00f6

In this post, Burkeman is writing about the huge threat of AI to human creativity, and I am struck by how he defines the concept of ‘aliveness’:

'The concept that sits right at the heart of a sane and meaningful life … is something like aliveness. It goes by other names, too, none of which quite nail it – but it’s the one thing that, so long as you navigate by it, you’ll never go too far wrong. Sometimes it feels like a subtle electrical charge behind what’s happening, or a mildly heightened sense of clarity, or sometimes like nothing I can put into words at all.'

'... Crucially, aliveness isn’t the same as happiness. As the Zen teacher Christian Dillo explains in his engrossing book The Path of Aliveness, you can absolutely feel alive in the midst of intense sadness. Aliveness, he writes, “isn’t about feeling better; it’s about feeling better.” 'It's about fully inhabiting the experience.

As a Christian, I agree. We follow One who said: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” John 10:10 (NRSV). What Christ offers us is something far deeper than mere happiness, which is often fleeting and transient.

We also know how closely sorrow and joy can sit together. Burkeman is right: sometimes during times of deep loss and grief I have felt, in the weirdest way, deeply alive. And sometimes, during times of stress, the inner writer in me has whispered: “I am hurting badly, but BOY IS THIS GREAT MATERIAL.”

Perhaps that strange, detached, yet very helpful little voice is something only us writers hear. It doesn’t make us emotionally cold - or at least it shouldn't. It makes us great observers, of ourselves, and other people. Big, dark, even ugly, emotions are part of a writer’s toolkit. We want to write about human nature as it actually is – as we actually are.

Of course stress doesn’t always have that effect: it can numb us. But that’s all part of being human too. The adrenalin kicks in when it needs to, to help us survive and get through. After the high peak of stress, we deflate. And in all of this we are so very human, as our Lord understands. He knows what it feels like. He wept when He saw death.

My favourite books, plays and films are the ones which capture the rich tapestry of life, the sorrow and the joy together. The ones which give us a glimpse of life in all its rawness and richness. The ones which go beyond the surface and include primal emotions. I want to strive for that kind of authenticity in my writing.

We’ve just come through a grey, dreary winter. Now the earth is waking up.

Lord, wake us up as writers, and to living – and writing – Your abundant life, in us. May it flow out to the world.

I work for the Diocese of Rochester, where I am also a Reader. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul, published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW anthology Merry Christmas Everyone.