Barely.

How alive do you feel right now? Do you even still… feel alive?

I know the most common answer would be barely. Almost anyone today would choose to say barely. I don’t know how the world does it so fast. But it’s doing a great job in making us feel merely breathing and existing, yet barely alive. When we were kids, we used to think and know that being alive is a scientific and anatomical thing – you know, the usual breathing in of oxygen, the normal heartbeat, the functional senses, or almost anything in our body system that doesn’t involve long beeping sounds and a straight indicator line in a hospital monitor. But now that we’ve grown quite enough to know how the world sucks, the meaning of being alive to us took its unfortunate turn. It’s almost only… a lost feeling now.

Do you remember the last time you’ve felt truly alive? Do you remember the things that make you feel alive?

If you feel mostly alive these days, you are lucky and blessed, I must say. And I hope you stay that way for as long as you live no matter how ugly the world could still get.
Because for us who didn’t get quite lucky enough to still know how it is to feel truly alive, I guess we just keep trying to get by with our empty lives and accept them as they are right now while still trying to wait for that magic of feeling alive again.

Well, maybe I was wrong to say that for us unlucky ones, being alive is a lost feeling. Maybe it’s just a… very short-lived moment, a fleeting feeling rather than a lost one that we couldn’t still possibly keep lasting in ourselves for some reason we couldn’t figure out.

And sometimes, we just surprisingly find it in the smallest of things we do, see, and hear. And so, when the world sucks in an extraordinary way again, maybe it’s enough that we just remember or keep a list of these things to help us get through it.

Which is what I’m just about to do now.
What makes me feel alive anyway?

• Having a new notebook to write on, a new sketchpad to draw on, or new paints to use make me feel alive.
• Discovering new music or listening again to some music I love that I haven’t heard in a long time makes me feel alive.
• Having people to make me listen to the music they love or making them listen to the music I love makes me feel alive.
• Seeing a stranger smile at me makes me feel alive.
• Learning new things like how to play a music instrument makes me feel alive. (I remember that time when we were finishing our thesis and I tried to learn the ukulele by myself which succeeded a bit; it was fulfilling.)
• Fulfilling a kid’s wish even if sometimes it makes them more stubborn makes me feel alive. (Say hi to my nephew!)
• Having to laugh over someone’s contagious laugh makes me feel alive.
• Hearing kids laugh always makes me feel alive.
• Laughing heartily with friends over messages or even just on the very limited time we get together makes me feel alive. (Well, I haven’t always been the good friend to any of them. I know that we rarely talk already, but I hope they’ll know that whenever I get to see them, they always make me fee alive and I’ll always be thankful for it.)
• Sharing my art or writings and having people who truly appreciate them always make me feel alive.
• Finding a good book that I’ll truly get absorbed with and finish in a day or two makes me feel alive.
• Eating buffet with family and friends always makes me feel alive. (hihihi)
• Seeing and reading my old works again makes me feel alive.
• And of course, knowing that I got to write an entry in here again after more than a year makes me feel alive.

Now, I want you to think of yours.
What makes you feel alive?

You don’t have to make a silly list like mine, you know. I just want you to keep a memory of all the things close to your heart that make you feel alive.
Because I know, and I understand how it gets harder and heavier now to live day by day;
I know how the feeling of not wanting to wake up anymore gets stronger just the moment you open your eyes each day;
And I know how frustrating it is to not figure out anything in your life when the world tells you you’re supposed to;
That perhaps, maybe just by making you remember them until you find the will to do them again, it would make accepting that the world sucks a little less hard. A little less unbearable.

It doesn’t matter how many or how few are left there in your head. Whatever that gives you warmth would always count.

Just think of it.
Do it eventually when you can.
Feel alive in it.

But if it still ever gets harder to think of any, I hope this would help:

Know that just by reading this, you’ve made me feel alive.

A lot less barely.