Where Is The Life?

When you have had a few more candles on your birthday cake and you have ridden your bike around the block a few more times than you can count, you can be forgiven for wondering what you are still doing in the neighbourhood.

You have been there, done that. You have lived the life, you have seen it all. The neighbourhood is now the same old, same old! The special place is no longer special. The scary woman around the corner is no longer scary. The funny man can no longer make you laugh. The bargain shop is still there, but the bargain now feels cheap and tired, exactly the way you feel at the moment.

You can see the young ones with the sparkle in their eyes. The neighbourhood is cool as far as they are concerned. The cock-eyed girl is the Audrey Hepburn of the block. All the boys line up to befriend her. That used to be you. You were the belle of the ball. You would be lucky to get as much as a glance from anyone now.

You wonder, where is life? You want that sparkle so bad. You want the eye of the young. Not the physical eye, but the excited eye, the uninitiated eye, the eye that sees all things for the first time and is truly awed. Yes, ‘awe’ is the word. You want to be awed, or better still, you need to be awed.

Staying in the neighbourhood is not going to do it unless you suffer amnesia and see everything anew again. Why wish for a debilitating illness? Maybe there is a better way, an exhilarating solution, which is to leave the neighbourhood. Yes, leave the neighbourhood! Also, do not stay too long in any new neighbourhood. Manage your expectations when you visit an old neighbourhood, you will have some nostalgic feelings but not the same excitement.

Keep moving on, keep exploring, keep inviting, keep enquiring, keep involving, keep evolving. Life is in the evolution, life is in the motion, life is in the doing. Death is static. Yes, life is in the motion, that is where life is!