It's Alive!

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

When did you feel most alive recently? Where were you? What did you smell? What sights and sounds did you experience? Capture that moment on paper and recall that feeling. Then, when it’s time to create something, read your own words to reclaim a sense of being to motivate you to complete a task at hand. - Sam Davidson 

This prompt is a tough one, gentle readers. So much has happened to your MatchGirl over the course of the past year - so many amazing things - that I'm not sure I can quantify one moment over another. When I felt the most alive?

A lot of things have happened. Highs and lows. Near nervous breakdowns. Ecstatic moments of life. And I know they will keep coming. It's hard to think seriously that one moment could make me feel more alive than another.

Some cool things have happened. Some things that certainly made me feel "alive."

I stood on the top of the highest point in Bogotá and looked out over the city, feeling like I could go anywhere- that that one stop on that journey was just the beginning of great things to come (it was).

I walked out of my apartment one Sunday afternoon to meet a friend for a drink and saw that friend, that man, suddenly in a whole new light (you can read about that here).

I held my friends' preemie son and heard him coo, happy and healthy and strong, even though born nearly 4 months early.

I went to a friend's house with Boyfriend one night when the snow was just beginning to fall and left three hours later with snow still falling and the whole world covered in white, up to my knees. We walked down the middle of Manhattan Avenue and Greenpoint was silent and clean.

I saw two dear friends marry, in a beautiful, sun-filled room, and cried (I couldn't help it) when they danced their first dance as husband and wife - it was perfection.

Something that I have learned, dear readers, as I have been on the journey that I share with you here, is that every single moment matters. Every single moment is important to the next. It doesn't matter if that moment is spent watching some "trashy" TV. It doesn't matter if that moment is spent working on your pet project or having a drink with a girlfriend or spooning with your hunny or sitting outside in the sun with someone you've not seen for a long time.

These moments, each and every one of them, no matter how mundane they may seem, these are the moments that you should feel the most alive. Pay attention to every one of them - the smallest thing might lead to the greatest opportunity.