The Lost Art of Feeling Alive
- Michael Kennedy
- 30 minutes ago
- 5 min read
A BlueWolfGallery Manifesto
“Many men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave
with their song still in them.”~ Henry David Thoreau
Beneath our restless pursuit of wealth and even happiness, there's a deeper, more ancient longing, one that can't be bought, but is readily available. It's the desire to feel fully alive. Not merely to exist, or to move through our days on autopilot, but to be awake. To feel the pulse of the world as something glowing and immediate within us.
As mythologist Joseph Campbell said, we aren't truly seeking meaning so much as "we're seeking the experience of being alive." And that experience isn't hidden in some distant horizon, it waits for us here now, revealing itself again and again, to those who are willing to notice.
Three Writers Intoxicated with Aliveness
And what we can learn from them
Some writers don’t just describe life, they devour it.
When you think of writers who were billowing with life, who comes to mind?
Writers who write like they know time is short and existence is precious. Their words crackle with urgency, curiosity, and a refusal to live half-awake... ?
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.”
~ American Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, from her book When Things Fall Apart
Three such writers who come to my mind are Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Henry Miller. They each shared a fierce devotion to being fully alive.
Though each lived differently, their message echoes across generations: Don’t merely exist. Burn. Taste. Experience. Live before you die.
Jack London: Burn Bright
For Jack London, life was never meant to be safe or cautious.
“Have you lived? What have you got to show for it? … I’d rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.”
London believed vitality mattered more than longevity. He once wrote that he would rather be “a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” To London, the worst fate wasn’t death. It was lukewarm living.
Sensory Immersion in Nature
London found intense "aliveness" in nature, describing it as feeling the air "like wine," seeing the colors of the landscape, and experiencing "boundless enthusiasm" even while managing severe health problems.
Ernest Hemingway: Be Here, Fully
Ernest Hemingway approached aliveness through presence and intensity. His advice wasn’t mystical or complicated, it was practical:
“Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep… When you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry.”
For Hemingway, life demanded engagement. Taste the food. Feel the wind. Love hard. Work hard. Fight when needed. But above all: Don’t drift through your own life.
Sensory Immersion in Nature
Hemingway’s sensory immersion in nature was a raw, intense engagement aimed at feeling "fully alive," treating the outdoors not just as a backdrop, but as a violent, beautiful, and authentic reality. He engaged his senses through active, direct interaction: hunting, fishing, and traveling, to experience a "spark" of life.
Henry Miller: Be Drunk on Life
Henry Miller saw life as a vast carnival of people, art, music, and experiences waiting to be explored. His advice was simple and radical: “Develop an interest in life as you see it… the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures… Forget yourself.”
Miller believed self-consciousness dulls life. Curiosity ignites it. He captured his philosophy in this quote: “The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
Sensory Immersion in Nature
Miller paid deep attention to minute details, such as a "blade of grass," which revealed an "indescribably magnificent world". He believed wonder isn’t found, it’s noticed: a shift in perspective that reveals the miraculous in the ordinary, especially through nature, from mountains to sea.
The Lesson: Aliveness Is a Choice
Despite their different personalities and lifestyles, these three writers point to the same truth:
Aliveness isn’t something that happens to you. It’s something you practice, which includes:
Paying attention
Pursuing what excites you
Being fiercely curious about people and the world
Feeling deeply instead of numbing out
Choosing experience over comfort
Choosing action over inaction
Life becomes more vibrant the moment we stop observing it from the sidelines... the moment we become better noticers, engage more with nature and people, and embrace uncertainty.
"After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night." ~ Walt Whitman, Specimen Days
The Practice of Noticing
Photography as a way of waking up to life
For me, photography is simply a practice of waking up. A camera slows me down and invites me to look more carefully at the world... to notice light, textures, patterns, movement, expressions and fleeting moments that might otherwise pass unseen.
Sometimes the photograph captures the moment.
Often it doesn’t.
But the real reward isn't the photograph. The reward is the experience. The feeling of standing anywhere, and realizing, suddenly and unmistakably: This moment matters, and I need to take the time to honor it.
The poet Mary Oliver once offered simple instructions for living: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
That's the spirit of BlueWolfGallery:
Pay attention to the world.
Allow yourself to be astonished.
Honor the moment.
And share those moments of wonder with others.
Because when we notice beauty and pause long enough to engage with the world fully, something subtle begins to happen. Something London, Hemingway and Miller experienced and conveyed with their inspirational words.
Life stops feeling less like something we're slogging through and more like something we're participating in.
BlueWolfGallery isn't only about photographs. It's about the pursuit of exceptional moments worth honoring and sharing.
If these visual stories help someone slow down, pause and look a little longer… Step outside into nature… Or rediscover the simple joys of being present in the world… Then they've done their job.
All photographs by Michael Kennedy (unless otherwise noted) / BlueWolfGallery.com
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I’m Michael Kennedy, a resident of Olympic Valley, CA (in photo above). I’m a writer & photographer and I love exploring nature and getting lost along the way. We live in a world that demands our attention and I just want to say thank you for your attention. If you enjoyed this post, please share with a friend. For more photos and stories visit BlueWolfGallery.com.
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