The swedish artist and jeweler Sebastian Schildt sent me this photo, which he took of me when we were out sailing earlier this year. He said watching me reminded him that if you have enough curiosity, you can find beauty in every moment. When he snapped it, I was intent on hanging over the side of the boat trying to capture the essence of how the water sparkled and refracted off the hull. A few moments later my position was even more precarious...

As November draws to a close, my feature on what it feels like to be alive is wrapping up. When you cast a thought-stone into the water, you don’t know how far it sinks or what it wakens on the way down.  This month I wakened all sorts of life forces and demons alike. I’ve connected with so many friends and acquaintances old and new ones, who have a powerful  resonance with life through nature, science, their friends, and even by living through some of the most horrendous life events. There’s a sound to their emails that make it clear that they are in harmony with each other, and there’s a rhythm that can’t be faked. I wonder even if they know that they sing in harmony. 

I love that Paul Dayton gave me the phrase that being alive means “spiritual vigor”. When I repeat the words, I want to get up in the morning and scrub myself with a big bar of the soap of life- lathering so thickly that I am completely covered in a foam of vigor that even coming out my ears.  I see myself standing in the shower and scrubbing up a storm to a fast beat. What a way to start your day!

The universe never gives you light without shadow. And my layer of foam has gone soggy at times this month, when I’ve had to face the callousness of those who would snuff out life and spirit without remorse or accountability.  (If you wonder, their emails do not have the same harmony). In these situations, I search for solutions that favor the spirit but I often have to leave with no peace. I sigh, I complain, I try again, and I growl (yes growl!) in hurt and frustration. It’s so easy to be alive with my “spiritual kin” those who add to my lather of foam and share my love of the planet and life.  But it’s harder look into eyes and see only rhetoric where there should be substance, and then to wonder what happened, and ask why is this?.  And that’s the moment when I call on Sebastian’s words-  if you have enough curiosity you can find beauty in every moment! This is a moment of being alive too. There  is a terrible beauty in that fraction of a second when awareness is heightened and a lesson is learned.  I owe a debt of gratitude to those on other journeys for our encounter, for the challenge they gave me and for broadening my definition of feeling alive. And of course, for making me growl (though my neighbors might disagree with the last one). 

Joe Gaydos sent me a quote from Peter Goodwin’s book “When the crocodile eats the sun” that I end with here because it is so apt.

The drama of life there is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension. It is the essence of tragedy. People love harder there. Love is the way that life forgets it is eternal. Love is life's ability in the face of death.”