Can you feel it?

I generally start my blog posts in my head while hanging washing, emptying the dishwasher and all the other mundane tasks that consume the bulk of my day, and tonight I started one about how The Husband and I leave for India in 4 weeks and all we have managed to book so far is our international flights and nothing in between, including transport and accommodation, shots or visas.  We're squeezing in a maniacal amount of places inside India within a 16 day stay, but *imagine me writing blog post inside my head* this is a trip we'll probably only get one shot at.  In our lives.

I stopped dead in my tracks and thought "Fark, this is likely to be the only time IN WHATS LEFT OF MY LIFE that I'll get to India.".

Now in reality, there's simply too many other places I want to see in the world to warrant a repeat visit to, especially when India is going to be so ....colourful/traumatic/friggin filthy (select one).

But still, nothing disturbs me more than the thought of my own mortality.  The thought that this could be the last time I (insert anything).....I'm not sure if my rampant need to acknowledge my life and the fact that my life clock is ticking, is due to my Mum's early death at 56 with a life time of dreams unfulfilled.

I want to create dreams and live them, then talk and laugh about them, then go and create new dreams and go crazy living those ones as well.
There is nothing more confronting and stop-dead-in-your-track'ing than really, truly grasping the idea that this...is...it...

The Sister and I have battled with and accepted the way our dear dad lives his life, he lives with complacency and simplicity that we have unfairly labelled "apathy" even though simplicity and happiness is all he wants. We've accepted that he has no need to trek through streets thick with sewage so he can stand amongst the greatest mass of people on earth, nor to dip his toes in the southern most point on the African continent, nor to crawl through mud, nor to wake up to a daily sunrise.  He has no desire to dance drunkenly with old friends to old songs, to get a tattoo nor to hover over the edge of a live volcano.  His worst nightmare would be to arrive somewhere new not sure where to stay nor how to get there, he is happiest at home amongst what he knows and loves.

After years and much head bashing we've accepted this.  But I will never choose that for myself.  I need to know my highs will roll over from one adventure to the next, and that in between time, I will relish the simplicity, and happiness will be a constant in whatever I'm doing. I'm fighting complacency and mediocrity, not by being dramatically amazing, but just by the mere act of doing.

I may not ever return to India, or the last country I've been to, or the next one I visit.  I may not do many things again, but that's ok, because I'm 100% positive that will be because I'm doing something new that reinforces that I am alive, and I am living this life.
I am living this life.

What makes you feel alive?