alive

 

alive

by: estefaaano_writes

-

I am alive. 

Not just breathing. 

There is a difference. 

One happens without thought. 

The other takes work.

The question came from inside. 

It was a good question. 

An honest one. 

The kind a man asks himself 

When he has been running too long.

Some days pass like a blur. 

Work. 

Bills. 

Traffic. 

That's just breathing. 

Moving air in and out. 

Keeping the body going while the mind sleeps.

Living is different. 

Living has weight to it. 

There is sun on your face. 

There is good wine that tastes like winning. 

There are words that matter between people who matter.

A man can go years breathing and not living. 

It happens. 

You get busy. 

You forget to look at things. 

Really look. 

You forget to feel anything real.

The answer isn't complicated. 

The answer is to wake up. 

To be where you are. 

To taste what you eat. 

To hear what is said. 

To say what is true.

A man who is just breathing 

Walks through life like a ghost. 

A man who is living leaves footprints.

—

The question stirs the mind, does it not? 

To breathe, mechanical function, the movement of lungs expanding and contracting—

how easily it becomes mistaken for living. 

However, living, true living, flows beneath the surface of mere existence,

vast current than the visible ripples.

One walks through days, through hours, marking time with appointments and obligations,

with conversations that scatter like leaves across pavements. 

The body moves; it continues. 

But consciousness—does it fully inhabit these moments? 

Probably living "right" means nothing more than presence.

What separates breathing from living might be nothing more than this quality of attention. 

This willingness to stand fully exposed to the overwhelming flood of sensations

that constitute a single, unrepeatable moment of being.