It Is The Easy Path To Slip Into Deadness

First published on November 18, 2020

It is so easy, in the world we live in today, to slip into deadness.

Technology invites us there. We might sit, about to get up and move on with our day, only to find ourselves flicking round through the same five websites for fifteen minutes, reading nothing, changing nothing, before finally getting up to move on with our day.

Our habitual nature invites us there, always taking us along the path of least resistance, the well-worn neural pathways of our habits, of how things have always been, of how we have always been.

Our responses to coronavirus take us there, hiding us away from so many of the things, people and experiences that bring us that sense of being really, truly alive.

It can be hard, hard, hard to choose aliveness. It can be hard to even recognise or feel it. It can be hard to know how to access it. Partly, it can be hard because the same tools, activities and experiences that sometimes invite our sense of being alive fully into our bodies, at other times deaden us, leaving us with a sense of deadened disappointment.

One glass of wine can be an expression of our aliveness. Two bottles, rarely.

One episode of truly amazing television can be an expression of our aliveness. Ten in one day, rarely.

A few minutes of engaged catching-up with the events in the lives of our loved ones through Facebook can be an expression of our aliveness. More than a few minutes of scrolling, rarely.

The sound of children playing in the playgrounds of the schools near my flat give me a little flash of hope, of brightness. It is a sound full of aliveness, it is a reminder that communities of people can thrive and live, even in these strange months of lockdown, separation and the invitation of deadness that many of us succumb to.

What if, deep down, this is the game of our lives? To truly listen to our sense of aliveness. To follow it, to allow it, to invite it. What if this is what listening to God means? What if this, indeed, is the connection to something greater than ourselves that will fuel our spiritual energy and invite us into the space of our potential?

If that is the game of our lives, then the coronavirus pandemic is one hell of a challenge, one hell of an opportunity. It is a request, from the universe: step up, humans. Step into your aliveness through all this.

Remember who you really, truly are.

Grow.