how do you know you're alive?
let's get existential
How do you know you’re alive?
I don’t ask you in jest, I ask you earnestly: how do you know you’re alive?
In March I enrolled in a writing class that was all about death. For me, it turned into a space where I considered how it feels to be alive.
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This question was posed to me in the second session of this writing class as part of a five minute freewrite session. Tucked into questions about how we care for our dying selves and how we care for others who are dying was this question, one that I had never considered before.
Trying to engage with it felt like a mudslide of existentialism was crushing me- I really did not know if I would be able to answer it at all. Sometimes thinking about myself from a philosophical or even divine perspective is very jarring for me, but I’ve been engaging the spiritual and self-growth parts of me lately so I figured I should at least try.
My initial response to the question (after the worry) came entirely from my intuition; I know that I am alive because of an invisible, unknowable force that tells me so. I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but it is something I am sure of.
In the interest of stretching my brain, though, I continued to muse about how I would explain that unknowable ~something~ to someone else.
I have often identified my aliveness and existence based on being seen by other people. That’s not necessarily wrong, because belonging and being seen are among our most basic needs, but I have come to understand this desire to be a hindrance to my ability to validate and affirm myself. I’ve done a lot of soul searching about this after finding myself cropped out of photos and memories from old friends left me wondering, “if they don’t see me do I even exist?”
I get a pit in my stomach every time I think about it, genuinely. Some of my deepest hurts and fears come from this feeling. My want to be part of something as an affirmation of my existence and value feels ancient, like it lived in me before I was even here. Maybe it is the most natural human desire. No one wants to be discarded, no one wants to be forgotten or unimportant or erased. But, as natural as it may be, it is not actually very fun or healthy to outsource all the time, sometimes we have to do it for ourselves.
So where do I find confirmation that I am, in fact, alive?
It all starts for me, I decided, in my body- my back aching, my feet falling asleep as they’re curled up underneath me, the tension increasing and then dissipating when I take a deep breath. We experience life primarily through our bodies and senses, they are fielding information for us long before our logical brains get involved. When I drop into my body I know I am alive.
I also find evidence of my aliveness in interactions with other living things. In many cases I am interacting with other people when I feel this kind of affirmation, but I also feel it when I have a meeting with the grass and the bugs and the wind. The wind moves around me, acknowledging the space I take up and the different path it has to take to get around me, the grass bends and folds to make room for my body, the bugs crawl across my warm skin or run when they notice me coming, sometimes as I swat them away. I walk through my yard and a rabbit that lives there freezes in its tracks, unsure of my next move; he doesn’t know what I’m doing but he knows I am a living thing. I watch bees collecting pollen from the tree in my backyard, we both try to avoid bumping into each other while we enjoy what the flowers bring us. The flowers keep me company too, though they are more subtle about it. These communions remind me of my existence, they affirm that I am part of something.
And I remember that I am alive when I feel. The persistent stir in my body when I feel anything at all, much like water right before it starts to boil, keeps me present and on my toes, inseparable from the rest of me.
When something hurts me, I can feel my heart aching and saying, “I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive.”
When I am happy, when I feel safe and seen I can hear it murmur, “I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive.”
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In all of this, though, there is an element of trust involved. I have to trust what my body is feeling, and myself to interpret it. I have to trust the people around me, and I have to give them the chance to see and affirm me. I have to trust the grass, the bugs, the wind, the earth, and put trust in the fact that they are here too. And I also have to trust myself, which is really really really hard for me to do.
I am trying to feel and be with my aliveness more lately, and sometimes it is really really hard, but sometimes it feels like the only thing I have to hold onto.
death class 4ever