tinywords

sometimes I get sick of the constant pressure from within to perform at every single level of existence. it’s tiring, performing is. even in regards to writing: sometimes i just want to write and not have to worry about how poetic i can make the piece, the diction, the alliteration, the structure, etc, etc.
it’s tiring.
so this is a bunch of words, beautiful or not, about nothing more than me.
me.
i’ve realized how hard it is to sometimes fully realize life.
to realize life.
life.
do we even know what life is? what it means to grasp it fully? to realize life and all that it is? all that it contains and all that we are in it? i’m not sure, really. i don’t think i know how to realize it.
i know how to react to it, but reacting is tiring, like beating the wind. it’s incessant, rampant, and it will never fulfill the desires within the human heart. in order to feel fulfilled and purposed within this thing called life, we must learn how to make the transition from simply reacting to life to actually realizing life.
how do i realize something that is constantly changing? how do i realize something that is consistently inconsistent? how do i realize a living life?
sometimes all i want to do is learn how to exist. most want to live, but in order to live you must exist, and how in the world will i learn to live if most days i barely exist?
“but peter”, you say, “you’re being ridiculous. of course you exist.” maybe. but look at it this way.
if when we speak of truly “living” we speak of living lives that are purposeful, full, and vibrant, then “existing” would at least contain the possibility for true life. if i exist i have the capacity for more, i have the potential for greater. if i exist, then i have begun to truly live. i have laid the foundation for the greater, the beautiful, the more.
most days slip by unintentionally.
i punch in, punch out. and i don’t mean work. most of us punch in and punch out of life every single day. life is our job, instead of our love. we know how to “do” life, but we don’t know how to live it and most importantly, love it.
call me a fanatic, an unrealistic optimist, and a fool, but i believe that one of the reasons we don’t experience the fullness of life is because we don’t actually believe we can. we don’t truly believe we can live like we want to.
so we escape, further and further into the prisons of self-doubt, anxiety, depression, and alienation from life evidenced by the amount of time we spend consuming others’ lives and/or projected lives instead of focusing on and living and loving ours’. we continue to scroll down endless feeds of photos, listen to endless hours of music, watch endless amounts of television and movies where the people on the screen are having the better and more beautiful lives we wanted to live but gave up on a while ago.
so life–this beautiful, growing, evolving, expanding thing becomes reduced to nothing more than reacting and consuming. we react to circumstance and situation, and we consume whatever we can in order to feel better about the less-than-ideal lives we’re living, whether it’s drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, movie, or social media.
we become human parasites, surviving by sucking the blood out of someone else’s life, instead of living our own.
i’m going to be turning 25 in a couple of months. and although there are indeed many things i have accomplished and many things that have happened in my life i am grateful for i realize that there is a level of living that i have not reached. i want to be someone who lives, not someone who simply consumes.
i know that life is a force unknowable. that life is unexplainable, that it is constantly growing and providing more and more possibilities for me every single day to take advantage of and to truly live in.
i want to live.
Jesus said that life and life abundant is available in him.
do i believe this?
i want life.
and i want it abundantly.
i want to learn how to realize life in every moment.
i’m sick of reacting.
i’m sick of consuming.
i want to live.
i want to live.
i want to live.