Edition 06: The reason why you're alive is to live

Who would have thought it?

This time last week, clad in my coral swimsuit, I was looking out at the sea in Mallorca, spellbound by the sky and making the final tweaks to my newsletter. Of course, I was struck by the splendour of it all, but not in a way that I don’t see in my daily life. The splendour of being alive isn’t reserved for weekend getaways to new lands or experiences out of the ordinary. The splendour of what it means to be alive is always one that travels alongside me. Never straying. Always constant. Because…

I just want to be a part of it. I want to be where the people are kissing wine glasses as they cheers. I want to be in restaurants where windows steam from the breaths of jovial conversation. I want to be where the birds fly into their homes way up in the trees. I want to be where the sun gently tickles our foreheads in the morning, through gaps in curtains. I want to be where my feet make shoes out of sand and my heart makes friends with the ocean. I want to be on trains that connect the moments of our collective days. I want to be where art is. Music is. Love is. I want to be here. I want to be a part of it all.

Isn’t that what it’s all about? Why we’re here? To just be here?

Anything can be sold, packaged, churned out and delivered back to us; even the reason for our very existence. Our purpose here has been so manipulated and co-opted by commerce, so rooted is it in expectations of productivity and consumption. The wellness industrial complex also declares that our purpose is one where we spend the entirety of our lives trying to find said purpose, optimise our lives beyond recognition and reach the VIP section of the exclusive club called, Enlightenment.

It’s not sexy to believe that our purpose might lie in our existence. That being present is all the proof we need that we existed. Instead of believing our purpose exists only in job titles, relationship statuses and lists of “I haves”, what if all the things we experience, the things we touch and taste, all the joys we have; became an archive of our existence. Where we see the visual, felt, olfactive and auditory evidence of our purpose. Where what we witness in the world becomes a record of our time here. Where we see our role as archivists creating witness statements of a life lived.

How beautiful a purpose is that? How refreshing is it, to think of this as the foundation of our lives. To experience. To viscerally feel the delight and wonder of our time here on Earth and navigate and sit with the pain and grief of that time too. Isn’t that enough? I don’t know about you but the burden of adulting feels like wearing a volcanic coat on my back, that can erupt at any moment. The pressure to not only survive and try to thrive feels quite sufficient, yet we add on this extra helping of stress by needing to know what our purpose here might be and desperately try to live up to it. Answering the beast of a question that is, “why am I here?”

How would it feel if we released the idea that our purpose is in all the things we can do, achieve, accomplish and possess? What if we surrendered into the idea that we are here to just live, and anything that comes from that is a beautiful bonus? A sacred choice. A magnificent extra. If they happen, they happen. But, on the most basic foundational level we know that we did what we came here to do, which was to simply exist.

This isn’t a case for not having goals, desires or visions. This isn’t about doing nothing other than existing. Yet there’ll be times in our lives when that is exactly all we can muster. This is about not claiming that our identity can be solely found in those things, not succumbing to the pressure that all of those things must be the reason why we’re here. We get to question if we can shift into the knowing that the big reason why we are here is to live, experience, and be present to all that exists. Then, from that place, we get to decide on the little reasons why we are here, with how we choose to spend our time. It allows us to unshackle from the chains of social expectations that lock us up in cells of “you should do this”, “why haven’t you done this?”, and “have you found your purpose yet?”

It liberates us into the expansiveness of savouring our stay here. Where we can really pay attention to the vivid cobalt of late summer skies and watch birds about to take flight. Where seeing children in glee as they run into water fountains is what it’s all about. The Quiet Joys. The simple pleasures. The wonder of it all.

Seriously, the joy I get from the juice of a ripe mango dribbling down my arm is what makes me feel alive. I live for slow kisses and sips of tulsi and rose tea. I am asphyxiated with bliss when the sun greets me as I lay in the park. I feel purpose paragliding down my spine when I dance and my body gets enveloped in the music. I am living for these microscopic moments of aliveness. Goddamn, I love it here.

Do I feel this same sense of aliveness when an email with a life-changing opportunity comes into my email? Well, kind of, but I no longer believe that’s the bulk of reasoning as to why I’m here. It gives me that big, audacious level of adrenalin-infused joy. I feel proud of myself. I can honour the gratitude I feel. Yet it doesn’t get right into my bone marrow like the ordinary noticings that captivate me. The little things are things that aren’t exclusive to me, we all get to experience it and that sense of interconnectedness is when I feel in purpose. Knowing that we can all witness the same things, resonates in a way that makes me feel like my life is attached to 8 billion others.

I don’t believe that my purpose can only lie in those emails and opportunities, because I can’t control it. I can work towards it, hope for it, but it’s an unknown, uncertain thing. It can go, it can stay, it has its own rhythm, it’s dependent on other people saying yes or no. It can be luck. It adds to my existence, yet it is not my existence.

I give permission to the things I witness, the ordinary moments and the seemingly insignificant, to live within my tissues. Taking up space within me that reminds me of how exquisite it is to fall in love with all that exists. The small things may not feel worthy of obituaries or Pinterest boards but they are available to us. They are here, reminding me of why I am here. They are found just within a step outside of my door. A simple choice to look up instead of down. A perspective shift. The desire to seduce life.

When this becomes purpose, the chasing find its finale. The feverish pursuit of trying to understand our place. The constant chasing of what’s next. Trying on new jobs and titles. Diminishing ourselves when we can’t find the answer. Listing all the ways we’re not good enough when we are rejected from opportunities that we allowed to define us. It’s okay if it still stings, but what if it no longer taps into the core belief that to not have or achieve something, means that we are not living into our full potential. That we are not living up to our purpose.

As someone writing short stories since I was 7, my book, Take It In sold more copies than I ever imagined it would. I’m sure my publishers wouldn’t agree. It was not marked as a commercial success. Much applause for the writing, yes, but no lists. No cause for virality. Not a super-selling sensation. I love this book. I am deeply proud of this book from each semi-colon to adjective. I still get emails from people who list all the ways it has changed them, with a rainbow of highlighted text and notes scribbled in the margins. I wrote it for them. I did what I intended to do. Yet, I dwelled in the sadness. What if that was my purpose and I screwed it up? What if my purpose was to be an author and it just wasn’t good enough? What if I wasn’t good enough? Surely, a book only counts if it sells 40,000 copies or hits the bestseller list? That’s when you’re a serious author, right?

But, my purpose never was and never will be to be an author. My purpose is to be alive and as part of that living, I choose to write. I will spend each day writing for as long as my hands can type and grasp onto weighty pens. I will live my life in service of savouring everything around me just to experience the pleasure of it and then I will let it find a resting place in the written word. Those words may find an expression in books, newsletters, sad gal journal entries, the ramblings in my notes app or poetry whispered to friends and lovers; that is not what I am attached to. I am attached to the act of writing being one of the little reasons why I am here, not the big one. I need not become the most bestselling writer, as to be in devotion to writing, I know that I must simply…live.

If our purpose is to live and that life doesn’t always feel good then what? Is it not safer to find our purpose in a job, than to be with the exquisite emotional bondage of admitting that we don’t like the entirety of our lives or even ourselves? Not really, because when we say that we don’t like our lives, what are we not ‘in like with’? I don’t hear people saying they don’t like how green the grass is or flowers blooming. I don’t hear complaints of being loved and accepted, or complaining that they laughed too much in one day. I hear complaints about work, not affording the clothes you want, not having enough money, being made redundant, not being able to find a suitable partner, being unable to live where you want to live, and not reaching goals. I hear people not liking their lives because the world feels impossible to be free in, if you don’t look or act the part. Also known as all the things we’re told our purpose is in.

To treat living life as the foundation, inevitably means all that this life has to offer, both the good and the absolutely not-so-good. I know that this sounds like a stevia-sweet love letter to life, yet written within all of this is also an ode to just how gross being alive can sometimes be. I’ve had my fair share of didn’t think I’d survive this moments. I’m sitting in the sludge of the latest scab of choice waiting to be picked over, from my last therapy session, as I write this. I felt dysregulated and on the precipice of tears for most of yesterday. I can acknowledge the ickiness of what’s arising within me, while I’m flooded with the joy of listening to the most mesmerising music while I type. Where a moth just landed on my finger to say hello and then flew away. A co-existence of emotions.

To acknowledge the beauty of life is not to cast aside its brutality. It is how we are able to mourn the cruelties and pain of our existence. It’s why our grief for Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria, Yemen, our close neighbours at home who are in such deep suffering, and everyone on this planet who has been cruelly stripped of their life, safety or hope, is beyond palpable. We have all witnessed the beauty of aliveness, so to imagine the babies who were killed before they saw their first sunset, the lovers who will never hear their partner laugh again, the people who will never feel safe enough to sleep the same sleep that we derive so much pleasure from, tears us to pieces because we know how much beauty those moments hold.

If we did not know that beauty, we would not know what it is like to have it taken away. To be fully tethered to the precious moments of aliveness within our days is not to bypass the atrocities that surround us. We are here to hold both. We are here to let the joy of our aliveness create ways for us to cope with what feels unbearable. As well as to cultivate empathy and heartbreak when we see an absence of it. We can feel the pain of others when we imagine lives that will no longer see the minutiae of a day. We do not grieve for people because they may never make it into a magazine, win awards or become a CEO, we grieve for all of the spectacular mundanity that they will miss. We grieve for the loss of their life or life as they once knew it.

How can purpose be anything other than to live? Living in our aliveness. Living in the glory of the ordinary. Witnessing what we often label as insignificant, but know that we will long for should it disappear. Living in the weight of grief. The enchantment of presence. Little fingers grasping onto one another. Hand in hand. Just trying to figure it out. Not really knowing where we’re going. Choosing how to spend our time. Being here.

It’s why we jokingly say in exasperated moments and memes that circulate around us, “just let me live”.

There’s more truth in those four words than we may ever realise.

It contains everything.