WHAT I’VE LEARNED ALONG THE WAY
By Ryan Verra
True ‘Life’
I’ve accepted that I’m very attracted to the extreme’s of life; the adventure, the challenge, the danger, the things that scare me the most. But it’s not for the adrenaline(which is still nice) and it’s not so much for the thrill or experience of it all. I’ve come to realize that I do this because it makes me present. My mind shuts off during the peak moments allowing me to feel life and remember I’ve got blood pumping through my veins and damn, I’m alive.
The concept of time only exists in our thoughts; always chasing the future and believing when we get there we’ll finally be happy is madness. I realize the mind is a beautifully constructed calculating machine capable of so much, but is never satisfied and always wants more. I choose not to be a slave to my thoughts or a prisoner to my memories, I choose to accept what is and know that thinking never solved any problems, only taking action. I am aware of danger but at the same time on the other side of fear; this is what truly makes me free. Freedom is a higher priority to me than my sense of security.
At the end of the day we are just a product of life that is aware of it’s own existence, made from the star dust of a supernova, in an infinite universe containing billions of stars. Every cell in our body is completely different than it was 5 years ago, the only thing that has remained with us and never changed since we were born is that present awareness that exists without thought or memory when you’re completely present. This awareness has no identity, no form, it is the route of all creativity, insight and truth, it is something the human mind cannot measure or calculate, therefore to try and understand it’s existence we often give it an identity as a soul or spirit. To truly be present with no thought; something that can be achieved through mediation and extreme sports or unintentionally forced through physical pain and crisis situations allows you to truly experience what our minds are unable to know, only understand.
We are just evolved monkeys living in less than 5km of survivable atmosphere and just 100m above survivable water depths. So realize how vulnerable we actually are, appreciate that out of the thousands of ancestors in your blood line that survived things we can only image, out of the millions of sperm fighting for the same egg; you’re here now and alive.
So just enjoy being a monkey.
