Wouldn’t it be nice if someone walked up to you right now and said, “This is the way to be alive. This is what you should do, eat, believe, buy, surrender.” Can you imagine how many mistakes you could avoid making? Can you imagine the relief?
Can you imagine the resistance, because so few of us like to be told what to do?
What, then, are we (often lost and struggling) humans meant to do? How are we to be alive?
I’ve been thinking about this because of something I read by Hannah Arendt this past week. She said the way to be alive is to “be loyal to life.”
Try as I might, I struggled to know what that meant, what that would look like in everyday life, so I did what I often do—turned to the dictionary to see if that might help.
Loyal means to be faithful, which turns out to be another one of those words where I know what it means, but I don’t know what it means.
Faithful means to be steadfast in affection for.
To be steadfast in affection for life? That feels like a big ask, because there are so many times when life makes that nearly impossible. It demands too much of us, it takes what we love or gives us what we don’t want. Life should behave better, and then we could be more faithful to it, right?
Faithful and loyal also mean constant, steady, true. A firm resistance to any temptation to desert or betray.
I’ve heard so many people say how they just want to “run away and hide from it all.” Understandable given all the demands we are trying to juggle.
But a lesson I learned during my four months in Japan is that even if we change where we are on the outside, we are still the same on the inside. Or to put this in Jungian terms, we drag our shadows with us wherever we go.
If that’s the case, running away isn’t going to solve anything. To be alive means to be in our selves in our situations. Little will change until we abide with what is, staying with it until we learn what it has to teach us.
This doesn’t mean we keep ourselves in dangerous or damaging places.
What it does mean is that as long as we feel safe, we choose to be with what is, whether that be joys and delights or obstacles and frustrations. We . . . live . . . where . . . we . . . are . . . not with resignation or bitterness, but with possibility. What are the lessons here? The nudges? The opportunities?
To be alive by Arendt’s definition, then, means we stay present, bringing our brave and kind imaginations to what is. This gave me pause, because we usually bring our (often fear-full) imaginations to what will be.
What would life look like if we turned our brave and kind imaginations to what is, here, now?
For some reason, I picture this as if my heart is taking one hand and my mind is taking the other, and like two little kids, they walk beside me, swinging my arms merrily. It might be raining. Who cares? That just makes more puddles to play in.
If I get hurt, why, then they’ll wrap their pudgy little arms around my legs and hold on tight.
And when there’s something up ahead, they’ll tug me forward, full of energy and delight, because they can’t wait to show me what’s next.
That’s just a load of new age bullshit, right? Life is hard, and we have to plan and prepare, and when things go sideways, it’s so much easier to run away and start over.
Maybe, but the more I think about this, the more I like how it sounds. Be loyal to life, your life. It is yours. You are the only one who gets to live it. What if you make that a sacred choice, rather than a scared one?
It really is up to us to decide how we will be alive.
We can accept what is, and be with it steadfastly, affectionately.
We can live constant, steady, true.
No matter what the world is demanding of us, we can resist the temptation to desert our lives, to betray our lives and hand them over to the enemies, whatever they may be (busyness, numbness, despair).
How to remain steady and true?
I’m afraid the answer to that isn’t sexy or easy.
The way to remain steady and true is to practice. Practice meditation, yoga, gardening, forest bathing, knitting, cooking, whatever it is that allows you to drop into your body, into your breath, into your Is, whatever it may be. Practice being with. Practice being in.
Be loyal to life.
Your little wild life.
And you will be well . . . on your way . . . to being alive.
thank you for this, betsy. this comes at a time when i am trying to figure out exactly how live in this twilight zone of a town i've been in for four years. i have been feeling a certain pull to gather back into myself, to practice being "loyal to my life", to read my philosophy and poetry, to get my hands back in my dirt, so to speak. thanks for yet another sign that that is exactly what i need to do. ✌🏽