Feeling Alive
There is a difference between being alive and feeling alive.
I wrote that in my journal one morning after jumping into the freezing cold water of Torch Lake. I’m certain that someone else has written that exact statement because it’s a cliché of sorts. Yet in that moment, and still to this moment, it seems profound to me.
I went on a road trip with Abhi, Rohan and David. We didn’t use laptops or our cell phones. I didn’t even bring mine. My parents weren’t too happy about this. "How will you contact us if you need help?” Sorry mom and dad. Maybe that was selfish of me, but I needed it.
We often think of the future as a place that we will somehow be physically attached to our phones. Whether that’s through some sort of eye implant, or something else from any Black Mirror episode. I think that we’re already connected, our phones are a part of us psychologically.
This is your life
Back to that phrase. There is a difference between being alive and feeling alive. If you’re reading this, you’re technically alive. Your heart is beating, so is mine. I’m alive, but do I feel alive? Sometimes.
On the trip I noticed how many deer were standing near the edge of the highway as we drove north. I slowly but surely lost track of time too. The only real indicator that mattered to us was when the sun would set. Without my phone I was more actively absorbing the world around me. It made me feel more alive.
Am I making sense? I often find myself going weeks (or even months) at a time and then I suddenly notice that I’ve been just going through the motions. Not actually being aware that my life is passing me by and I’m just sitting in the backseat looking at my iPhone. It’s like the parable that David Foster Wallace talked about in a commencement speech, with the fish in water. Two younger fish pass by an older fish and he goes “How’s the water, boys?” And then one of the younger fish turns to the other and says “What the hell is water?”
This is your life, right now. It’s happening. For some reason you find yourself reading my writing, and here I sit, writing it. In moments when I don’t feel alive, I always seem to be able to bridge the gap to feeling alive again by paying close attention to my surroundings. I was really able to soak in life when I was on this trip. Especially when we jumped in the cold water. It’s impossible to not feel alive when you plunge into the lake. It’s so visceral, I can’t do it without letting a high-pitched primal scream. In the water you realize how quickly your breath is inhibited, and for guys, your “pride” is literally shrinking. You feel your place in the world. You feel alive.
P.S. If I’m doing a bad job of explaining this, next time you take a shower just crank that all the way to the blue side, it’ll make sense then.
Why take photos?
Are you still reading? I’m surprised that I haven’t convinced you that I’m a total condescending asshole. Isn’t it a bit hypocritical that here I am, preaching about how awesome it was to go away without any electronics, yet have a camera in my hand the majority of the time? Yes, but… photography has become much more of an exercise in paying attention to the world around me. Wow! Look at how cool that orange ladder looks against the blues of Lake Michigan. I don’t think you need to be a “photographer” to do something like this. The world has so much going on within it. Good, bad and ugly, but I usually do a good job ignoring it and instead focus on myself. My iPhone really encourages this sort of self-centered behavior. Why would out the window in the car when you could look down at your phone? Why engage in an uncomfortable conversation with a stranger when you could text your best friend? I could talk about this until I’m blue in the face but I think you get the point. (The group of photos below is a slide show type thing so if you click on them it will show like 6 other ~cool~ photos)!!!
Where from here?
Are my scattered thoughts making any sense? Usually after trips I find myself in a weird sort of depression, wishing that I could’ve had just a few more hours away. This time I didn’t feel that way. Instead I came home feeling energized, refreshed and focused.
Focused. That’s something I don’t feel too often.
This post has been difficult for me to write, not because I don’t have a lot to say, but rather I’m trying to say way too much shit. I’ve in total written around 3,000 words for it and trying to boil it down to what’s important has been the issue. This problem isn’t limited to just writing. I really really have issues with focusing on one thing at a time. And that’s what I realized from my time away from my iPhone. Trying to focus and think about everything literally makes my life less enjoyable. It’s much better for me when I’m focused on one thing. I thought I was going to come to more of a profound conclusion but at this point I’m sort of sick of writing.
People
Are you really going to go the entire time and only talk about yourself? I’ve made it this far without properly mentioning the most important part of the trip, the people that I was there with. David, Abhi, Rohan, and myself (pictured above). From reading this you might be able to tell that I spend a lot of time up in my head. I had a total blast with these guys. We laughed a lot. From Abhi shotgunning his first beer (it was actually non-alcoholic) or Dave trying to learn how to drive stick shift. On the last day of our trip, Rohan sat us down and recorded an episode of his podcast. What a great way to capture the memories. It was so cool to learn about how Abhi’s life in India is different from mine here in the United States. We both love Drake…
“Imagine if I never met the broskis.”
Congrats! You either read your way here or just scrolled through the photos. Regardlessly, I made a video about the trip in general and some of the other ideas that I wrote about here.
