Activate life Yvonne Wennerlid

Let us begin by thinking about how inclined we were to discover things as children. But first, let us take a couple of steps further back and arrive at the day we were born. What happened there and then? Quite a lot, considering that it was our first day on this earth, where we were going to create our own path through life. 

We needed guidance, direction and clear rules in order to begin to understand what life was. Over time, we dared to move farther and farther away from a person who made us feel safe. Sometimes our steps took us too far away, and for many this could lead to a feeling of freedom, while others became frightened and cried. 

When school begins, there is a curriculum that someone has put together to make sure that we acquire basic knowledge in many different areas. With this foundation to stand on, we can learn about what interests us. But if this institution called school did not exist, how would we be able to manage life in today’s society? 

Today, everything is available just one click away, and most things can be found as videos on the internet. Logic disappears and the intuitive part of life is almost minimized. Building on ones intuition sounds strange to my ears. Because it comes naturally to pull your hand away from a hot stove. Right? 

Now that we have mentioned birth and school, intuition and logic, we need to move into what drives me: activating life. We need to make active choices, and we need to work on the choices we make, because many of the choices we make have already been made for us by society. We are moulded into a shape and everyone is expected to be the same, but that is not the idea when we are born. We are different, and we need to take different paths through life. 

To weave school and the building blocks we call basic knowledge into this, it is a difficult task today. As a class assistant at a secondary school, I see every day how difficult it is to motivate the students and keep their attention for even a short period of time. Their attention span is tragically short. The ability to draw conclusions is becoming almost minimal, and everything is questioned, not because they want to understand more, but because they want to avoid activating themselves when they are supposed to solve tasks. 

So what would it have been like if we had been placed in a forest, in a boat on a lake, on a mountaintop or somewhere similar? What skills would we have had, and how would they have emerged if we had no previous knowledge to draw upon? 

The more I think about it, the more interesting it would have been if we had researched logical thinking more and more. Because I say that logic and thinking are free, although many people disagree with me. The effort required takes a toll on the energy quota they have for the day. 

If we can take this one step further, I want to focus on our interests and hobbies, which we can often devote and give a great deal of energy to, even when there was almost none available when we started. Can we then draw the conclusion that we have selective energy? Yes and no. Every day is different from the next, while at the same time, one of the most important things we have to do is devote ourselves to our interests. It creates more of our energy and personalities. 

I am passionate about working out, photography, writing articles, reading endless numbers of books, travelling, laughing and hugging. The most important thing, after all, is that I get to be with my family. Is family an interest, or a given that I give my energy to? All of it at the same time. 

Through their presence, my husband and my two teenage daughters, who are soon 17 and 19, make sure to replenish my energy reserves, even though sometimes they can take parts of them away with my permission. In fact, I call that living. 

Now I want to return to activating life, interests, active choices, habits, taking action and routines. They are all connected, and that makes it important to see what kind of whole is being created. The whole consists of small parts that build our lives, and how active am I when I choose what I choose? Some things need to happen automatically, while others bring something more out of us. 

Another level is trying something we never thought we would like. For me, that would be learning to understand art on another level. How can certain statues, works of art, paintings and decorations be worth the amount of money that art connoisseurs say they are? Just a few months ago, I visited a photography exhibition with my husband, and there was a great deal of history behind the photographs. So photographs do not fall into the category of a new area for me, since I love photography. We therefore decided to visit the art museum where we live. With an open mind, we stepped into a new world, and I was careful to avoid judging anything beforehand. 

So what happened? Certain things caught my interest, but why those particular objects and not others? Perhaps because the ones that did not appeal to me were too abstract and did not really show anything unique? After all, I fully activated my brain. 

Another thing that definitely activated my brain was when my husband and I visited a restaurant where only blind and visually impaired people worked. This meant that we ate in complete darkness and had no idea what was on our plates. We therefore had to guess what we were eating. 

A fun part of the visit was that, based solely on the voices of the other guests, we tried to guess their ages and professions, what they looked like and what interests they might have. Even today, we know nothing about the other guests because we had absolutely no idea who was sitting next to us. Except for two persons sittings next to us, at the same table. We asked them, and we were completely wrong, but it did not matter. The evening was still a success, and the food and drinks were to our satisfaction. 

Activate life and see what grows within you. Allow yourself to be enchanted and amazed by how new things can make you feel in different ways. Try to move away from the idea that you know what is best for you. If you have allergies, that is of course a completely different matter when it comes to food, drinks and other substances. But if we focus on the mental aspect, it may be that we consider ourselves allergic to certain subjects because we have built an inner resistance for some inexplicable reason. 

Give yourself the chance to activate new parts of your brain, to make more connections and to feel that you are alive in your choices and in the active life you are creating.