dpdr

 

Imagine you’re holding a snow globe in your hands. The world is in the globe, but you feel like you’re on the outside of the glass. Somehow, you are unable to connect the ‘I’ looking in with the world in the globe. That connection and its absence makes all the difference to whether or not I feel I am alive. If I quieten my mind, I can almost taste the colour and richness of life as I knew it before. It comes with a sense of expectation, a feeling of being an agent in changing and plotting a course through the world. This is, I think, the very act of ‘living’, which I bear witness to in others, all day, every day. I still understand it academically, but I can barely remember what it feels like. These days I’m in a constant state of grief; I feel as if I’m grieving for my own death, even if I seem to be around to witness it.

Jane Charlton