What makes you feel alive?

What makes you feel alive?

My alive place is the ocean. It’s crashing roaring waves. Big enough to contain my emotions in all their turbulence. To stand at the bow of the sailboat and feel the wind in my hair as it crashes through the swells. To dive into its depths and discover its secret gardens and treasures. I love to run on its shoreline and to kick the spray high into the air and watch it transform to sparkling diamonds as it catches the rays of the sun.

For the first 40 years of my life, I lived five minutes from the beach. We spent all our free time there. Growing up along its shore we were a ragtag bunch of surfers and swimmers. We learned about its currents and moods. As we grew up our children learned to snorkel and rock comb the pools, fish for small rockfish we called “Bullies” with crushed periwinkles. Our children, in turn, were brought up on the beach. They learned to snorkel and boogie board.

I now live in landlocked Calgary AB Canada, many, many miles away from the place that makes me feel alive. I can, however, visit that place any time I want to. It’s not that I am able to physically access it but its image and smell and the feeling of my footprints on the wet sand are so embedded in my mind I am able to close my eyes and be there in an instant.

Today as I reflect on this verse I think of my friends and family who are wracked with life-threatening illnesses. I pray that they have similar images burned into their memories of their happy places. The hikes they have taken. The dives they have been on. The mountains they have climbed and the ski hills they have sped down. I pray that they feel the crisp mountain air fill their lungs and the cold sting of the snow as it touches their skin. I pray that their senses would come alive with the wonder of it all, and the gratitude that no matter where they are now they have been a part of the wonder of it all.

What is your happy place? do you have a well of memories that you can draw from in times of stress or sickness?