Life Is Happening Right Now, Everywhere
We see traces of self-centered living everywhere. Of course, I am at the center of my life because I am the observer; I look from where I am, and life is happening before me. Since life flows in front of me, I can perceive myself as something separate from it. I can abstract myself from it or think that life is just a series of actions happening *to* me. Someone leaving me happened *to* me. Someone yelling at me happened *to* me. Life is happening *to* me, these injustices are happening *to* me… and so on.
There is a quote from Byron Katie that I love: “Life happens for you, not to you.”
Life happens *for* you, not *against* you.
When I think of life as something separate from me, I create a distance between myself and life itself. Life is over there, and I am over here. In other words, I am not *in* life. Life has to come to me.
But is that true?
Especially during the pandemic, as we stopped going to places and meetings moved into our homes, classes moved into our homes, the idea that “life should come to me” started to spread and settle into our bodies. In the past, if I wanted to take a class, I had to leave home, travel, make an effort, and participate. Life was happening, and I was moving toward it. I was joining life.
With consumer culture becoming embedded in us as if it were an organic part of us, we’ve shifted the equation. Life should come to me, and I shouldn’t have to do anything. Life comes to me while I sit here; notifications pop up on my phone, someone likes my photo. And when I want to stop it, I put my phone on “Do Not Disturb,” and life stops coming to me. Our minds and our aliveness are also products of life, so even when we are alone, we are intertwined with life. But solitude and the human mind can be so deceptive that we might not consider ourselves as “living” unless we read our reflections somewhere.
The mind, with its remarkable speed and ability to evolve, also holds the potential to trip us up. It does this most effectively by making us believe we are nothing more than our thoughts. You’ve probably come across this phrase before: “I am not my thoughts.”
Life begins when I realize that *I am not my thoughts*.
Nowadays, we’ve started going out to life again, participating. We’ve reduced passivity, and some of us might even be more social than ever because we missed it so much. Others have grown accustomed to solitude, abstracting themselves, spending more time practicing being with themselves. Whether alone or with others, participating in life is a matter of consciousness.
You can engage with life even when you are alone—through meditation, writing, dancing, practicing yoga, watching trees… and many other actions that make you who you are. When another person is involved, a more interactive life begins; give, receive, engage in communication, get triggered by the other, let your emotions rise, suppress or experience them, talk, awaken impulses, and form a connection with the other.
While we perform many of these actions on the mental level, when another person enters the interaction, the body becomes more involved. As mammals, we are emotional beings, and when we communicate with another, our emotional and sensory layers are stimulated far more than we realize. All of these reactions occur throughout the body, and with our whole being, we are engaging with life.
Life is happening right now, everywhere. Even while standing still, your entire circulatory system, your breath, the communication within your nervous system—all of it is happening in every moment. Your body is working for you, inviting you to life. If you sync up with its rhythm and step forward, life won’t need to come to you—life will begin to happen *for* you.