Munch away LIVERS OF LIFE!
Posted by Robin Easton
I remember when I was a kid and I thought life was forever, that there was ONLY life and nothing else. I thought summer vacation was a year long, but it was barely three months. How amazing to be so in the moment that I was ignorant of death, ignorant that humans tend to live anywhere from 75 to 105 years. As a child there was just Life. It was an infinite thing, and maybe it really is. Who knows? Now as adults we tend to think life will last forever, but maybe in a sliiiightly different way than we did as kids. I suspect that when we are older it’s not so much about being in the moment as maybe having fallen asleep at the wheel. Where as healthy kids live every moment with gusto, full on, volume ten, and they see little beyond the moment because they are too busy devouring new experiences, tastes, sounds, textures, sights and smells. They consume new experiences as if their life depended on it. It does. Isn’t that true for all of us?
Hopefully — if we have matured — by the age of 35 or 40 our minds and more importantly our bodies can fully grasp that the average life doesn’t last forever. If I look around me it appears that most humans tend to die somewhere between 75 and 105, unless they are struck by an accident, disease, or other unfortunate tragedy prior to this age. Or they have found a way to physically sustain themselves upon some mountain top, sitting guru style, buck naked in the snow, communing with the ethers to the great age of 150 or more. Okay, okay, moving along. So I wonder: where in those years between childhood and 35 to 40 do we fall asleep at the wheel? Where do we start to let life slip by while we take a back seat and no longer pilot our own plane? More important, how do we return to “Life at volume ten”?
I think one of the greatest things we can do for ourselves is to try new things, allow new experiences into our lives, even alien experiences. “Alien” does not mean you must be abducted by aliens. Although that certainly would be a VERY new experience. “Alien” means strange or unusual for us, out of character.mIt might feel weird or foreign, an experience that makes us say, “But that’s not me, I never do that.” So do it. Try new things, like you try on new clothes. Go to new places. Meet new and unusual people. Taste new foods. Try on opposite beliefs to your own. Take a hot air balloon ride. Go caving. Sleep in your backyard. Go for a barefoot hike. Shave your head; save shampoo. Eat earthworms; I’ve heard they’re high in protein!!! Try something you’ve never done before!! Read a different type of book. Turn off the TV one night (Oooooooh a whole night without TV), and go watch the stars, listen to the wind, stand in the rain. We must continually stretch the boundaries of our routine and often set ways. It exposes us to a much larger world, both within ourselves and outside ourselves.
When I am trying to decide if I want or don’t want to do something I ask myself this: “If I were a 110 years old on my deathbed would I look back and say, ‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t quit that crappy job, or taken that trip to Borneo, or tried those fried grasshoppers.’ ” No, I seriously doubt it. So I say, “Munch away you LIVERS OF LIFE! because I think we will only regret the impulses that we do NOT act upon. So what if we make a few mistakes along the way? Life will soon teach us who we are and what we need to know.”
From my heart,
Robin
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This Site: © Robin Easton
Website: http://www.nakedineden.com
Blog: http://nakedineden.com/nakedinedenblog/
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5 Comments so far...
emsraido Says:
18 February 2008 at 3:33 pm.
Yes, yes, lovely! My ukulele arrives tomorrow! Now that is a new experience. Rob, it is more important than ever to stretch our perceptions, to question, to listen, to be still as this great, vital LIVING Universe dances in and around us. So much more than a 9 to 5. So much more. Thank you for your beautiful postings. Em
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Makinart Says:
18 February 2008 at 11:59 pm.
Great blog Robin! A good blog deserves another, and so I blogged about you twice! http://www.about-albuquerquenm.com I too have done some newer efforts: this month I am writing fashion reviews (at another site). This might be a great time to laugh, as you know me, Mary MacIntyre, and my fashion thrift…once you start blogging one never knows what we’ll learn or find, or find interesting. I am excited about this new journey, for you Rob,
Mary
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leonoralives Says:
19 February 2008 at 8:22 am.
Thanks, Robin. This is lovely. I would like to offer to the menu of possibilities the option of doing absolutely Nothing. To really sit, silently, in stillness even for a moment and feel this full on, can be a “grown-up’s” version of Volume 10, because from here, one sees and experiences only the moment, which when it’s all said and done, is all there is. Thanks for the inspiration you so naturally and generously share. Inspiration=the Breath of Life…..Lovingly…Leonora
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Robin Easton Says:
19 February 2008 at 8:34 am.
YES! I absolutely agree with Leonora (“leonoralives”) about the option of doing nothing. I think that for so many people in America “doing nothing” — and by that I mean just being, or maybe sitting with silence or nature, or taking time out through our day, even 10 minutes to be still…all of these things would definitely be new experiences for many of us and can alter our lives in wonderfully healing ways. Sometimes the most dramatic actions take place in “silence” or when we are doing “nothing.” Stay tuned Earthlinggs, I will eventually have more on SILENCE.
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phoenix Says:
30 June 2008 at 6:54 pm.
excellent post! and it’s true, life seems to be bypassing us, I was actually thinking about that tonight, where have all the good days gone? what happened to those days? it sometimes feel like im asleep and life is just going on, I feel like my mice on the hamster wheel, moving with the speed of light, but not going anywhere. and the answer is to experience new experiences! now to find those new experiences!!
I was also thinking a while ago, as you mentioned no TV, I was thinking of using no modern day stuff for a whole day. switch off all the electricity, and have no tv, no radio, no pc, nothing, just me and myself, and I!! 
will try and do that sometime…
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