To Be Awake Is To Be Alive!

Hey!

Wake up!

Yea, you!  Are you awake?

How adept we become at sleepwalking.  We go through our days taking care of the same old business with such frequency and repetition that tasks no longer require our full attention.  We go through the motions using as little gray matter as we can get away with.  Why think when it rarely becomes necessary to do so?

Henry David Thoreau suggested that "only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion."

Ouch.  Can this be so?  I know my college student children would contest that theory--but perhaps active students are those few living contrary to the millions that regularly sleepwalk without exerting themselves.

I know as a homemaker I am very skilled at doing laundry mindlessly.  Dishes, too.  In fact, I have gotten so expert at regular household duties that I could do them blindfolded.  And sometimes it looks as if I do.  Because I take very little interest in my day-to-day tasks, my mind shuts down and settles into power-saving "sleep" or "hibernation" mode.

My best days, then, are when I do unlock the passion and creativity that yearn to be utilized and maximized.  "Little is to be expected of that day...to which we are not awakened by our genius."

Genius is not often given the attention it deserves.  It takes a backseat to fad and fashion; it suffers from underuse as society carries us down the path of least resistence.  Why read a challenging book when mind-numbing pulp fiction floats us down the popular stream, lulling us into a stupor?  Why tap your own reservoirs of thought through meditation and study when it is so much easier to pop in a video?  Or surf the web?  Or check in on facebook?

You see, I am chastening myself.  I cannot point a finger at others without feeling my own guilt.

It is time to wake up; time for me to wake up.  Henry would have us all "learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake."

"To be awake is to be alive!"

Am I alive or merely biding my time?  "Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."

As we contemplate our stewardships, is our full potential being realized, or are we still asleep?  Do we even bother to pinch ourselves to try and stay awake?

Do we even remember what we did yesterday?