the great advantage of being alive…

(instead of undying) is not so much
that mind no more can disprove than prove
what heart may feel and soul may touch
—the great(my darling)happens to be
that love are in we,that love are in we

and here is a secret they never will share
for whom create is less than have
or one times one than when times where—
that we are in love,that we are in love:
with us they’ve nothing times nothing to do
(for love are in we am in i are in you)

this world (as timorous itsters all
to call their cowardice quite agree)
shall never discover our touch and feel
—for love are in we are in love are in we;
for you are and i am and we are(above
and under all possible worlds)in love

a billion brains may coax undeath
from fancied fact and spaceful time—
no heart can leap,no soul can breathe
but by the sizeless truth of a dream
whose sleep is the sky and the earth and the sea.
For love are in you am in i are in we

– e. e. cummings –

4 Replies to “the great advantage of being alive…”

      1. I’m feeling like being thoughtfully antagonistic. 😉

        Does going through the motions of life, with everything grey and tasteless, mean you’re alive? Re-read the post with that as context…

        1. And my reply was not as clear as it could’ve been, apologies. I was multi-tasking with an attempted multi-layered response, haha: I was referring to a physical state of ‘not alive’ a.k.a death but also implying the ‘living death’ that you describe.

          I know a few people, men and women, who prefer what you suggest is a ‘grey existence.’ For them, I think it’s a way to survive, truly: keeping things light and easy, and unprovocative creates a reliable, protective shield. This kind of existence keeps you in control. It keeps things safe, and it’s serviced by a certain amount of denial, and choice – choosing an emotional state rather than feeling the fullness of one’s feelings. For them, this ‘grey’ is the level of engagement that they can bear.

          Going beyond this, into the full range of the colour spectrum, requires facing fears, unresolved history, present survival patterns and how these connect to emotional/ sexual blocks. It requires huge risk, huge investment, huge energy and time. It means confronting immense, unpracticed desire. It means possessing a limited scope of honest communication. It asks you to love yourself even when you don’t know how to or no one else seems to. It also means you may not experience yourself in any kind of truly transformative way.

          So, I can see it. I can see how one might prefer ‘the grey,’ the being ‘not alive’… it can be exhausting more than liberating. I have loved/ love people who live there and have come to appreciate how it sustains them in different ways. And even though I tend to consciously rail against it, I do have sporadic moments of it myself… as I suspect we all do in our own way.

          It’s impossible to sustain momentum if you’re constantly on a precipice…

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