In Sia’s song called “Bird Set Free,” there is a lyric that says,
"But there's a scream inside that we all try to hide / We hold on so tight but we cannot deny / Eats us alive, oh, it eats us alive."
It then repeats, with a slight variation,
“Oh yes there's a scream inside that we all try to hide / We hold on so tight but I don't wanna die, no. I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, yeah," (Sia, 2016).
Life Force
This scream inside, is what I call our “life force.” It says, “I don’t wanna die,” it says, “I wanna live.” It declares more for our one and only life (see poem: No Wonder There is More). Consciousness is so special because it knows that we are alive, right now, during our one and only shot (see The Beauty of Human Consciousness).
This life force is a mystical thing sometimes. You cannot see it, you cannot really even define it. You just feel it and know that it is there. It is what pushes you to be disciplined, to set a goal and to meet it, despite temptation creeping it, keeping you away from that goal. It does things to keep your dignity alive, your purpose alive, your wellbeing alive.
Your life force is your higher good, a higher vibration, a part of you that wants the best for you, that wants to die with no regret. Your life force is a good, healthy, internal push. The push shows up in small ways. It says, “You can do better,” and, “You can feel better,” and so on. It comes down to the fact that when I use this life force, I am feeling like I am using my life wisely. That it is not passing me by. That it will not be wasted, falling down the drain, slipping away from me.
Some will say that there is no perfect, there is no ideal, there is no way to be totally happy all the time. But I am going to do my best to get as close to that as I can. I have felt it before, the feeling of my purpose and of being alive, in small inklings, and I have chased after it, trying to do things that will spread that inkling into an entire day. Giving myself a canvas to allow the ink to spread across it. Then a week. Then month, then year and so on.
Why not chase this life force as much as we can? We fully have the will and often the resources, infrastructure and capacity to do so. So why not do it?
Love
It also is love, I think. You cannot really have a life force, you cannot feel it in the first place or know how to follow it, how to resist temptation, how to follow through with a goal for yourself if you do not know love. If nobody has infused it into you (see Bear Allegory). If nobody has shown you how to bring it up within yourself.
But seemingly every societal structure has stripped love from us. In school, we are taught that we are bad. We often are punished when we did not actually do something bad. We are shamed endlessly it seems. Faulted for every wrong. We feel like we have to work to show that we are worthy, be perfect to show that we are worthy. It seems that we always have to be on, always doing something. This is how I felt, anyway (See my post about healing perfectionism and feelings of unworthiness).
When society is unbalanced, it strips us of love. When we operate under systems of rigid hierarchy and unequal outcomes, we are bound to internalize what it tells us. See Power is Transactional, Society Craves Balance, and The Gifts of Accountability).
We have the power (and responsibility) to find love again. I started to feel love come back to myself when I started a spiritual journey (see narrative section of Spiritual Revolution, and this portion of: Letting Go: A Spiritual Practice) and when I started to learn about those around me (Seeking New Perspectives). What they experience, how it is different from me (see Mud on Tires). It was from these practices that love returned to me (see Love is Easy, I thought and My Heart Wants Something Else).
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
Sia. (2016). Bird set free [Song]. On This is acting. Inertia; Monkey Puzzle; RCA Records.
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