Life and Death and Rain

It's dark and raining this morning and it looks sort of foreboding and eerie outside. I love the rain...it means spring is coming and everything will be clean again...oh, and the smell. That fresh "good things are coming" smell...it's enough to make me cry.

I experienced a runners high for the first time in my life last night. I've had friends who've told me about this phenomenon and claimed to have experienced it but I honestly didn't believe them. What I felt every time I went running was hot, sweaty, tired and in agony. Not exactly a high. But last night something happened. I don't know what cosmic circumstance aligned for it to happen but I know at one point I felt freed from my body like I was invincible and as light as a feather. I felt like I was floating and that I could run forever. It was awesome.

I've been thinking about death a lot lately. Now, I think about death a lot anyway but a few people I knew have died in the past several months and that has got me thinking. After millions of years of evolution you would think that humans would have come up with a way to deal with death better than we do. I find it a hard concept to get my head around. The idea that someone is there, with feelings, a smile and a history and then suddenly, they aren't. It doesn't seem to make any sense, even though I know it makes perfect sense. I heard Margaret Atwood say once that our ability to understand death is hampered by the English language. We think in a first person language that has past, present and future tenses. We struggle when we try to drop the subject or the future tense...it just doesn't work.

These thoughts of death haven't been sad so much as just considering it as my certain fate. I have always appreciated the small things in life and have made an effort to slow down and feel grateful for being alive. Lately I have been trying even harder to live life actively as opposed to by default. The TV has been put away for months now and neither Brian nor I has dragged it out. I have been running, breathing deeply and talking to friends a lot. I'm eating healthier than I ever have. I've started doing a lot of volunteering and getting involved in the community and it feels good. I feel alive. The way I figure it, if I've never really felt alive I won't be able to appreciate feeling dead.