12 things you can do to make you feel alive

The weight of the long holidays plus the fact that it is the same world we are going to get back to makes these first days of the year a bit too daunting to take on. To help the new year pull them to its side, some come up with New Year’s resolutions or something similar just to have a sense of promise. Over the holidays, I came across a book published by Profile Books in 2004 called 100 List of Things to do Before You Die compiled by New Scientist magazine writers Valerie Jamieson and Liz Else. The "things" were science-related and I realized that I have done a good number of them but that when I did them, it was not out of a sense that I had to do them before time ran out on me. Doing those things simply made me feel alive! So I figured I would come up with my own list that would include one of theirs. I only have space for 12 for now but I invite readers to send me their own suggestions and maybe we can come up with a running list throughout the year. Here’s my list:

1. Magnify little things. I am not talking about blowing your own little emotional issues out of proportion but literally "little things" like bugs, tiny flowers, dust. Of course, the best way to do this is to place them under the microscope but a magnifying glass will do (as long as you are not directly doing it under the Sun which can fry those little things). I also saw this dome-shaped "bug viewer" I gave to my nephew Nigel as a holiday gift I found in the Rustan’s toy section. It enables him to view his bugs without killing them. His problem, however, last time I was with him, was that he cannot place his favorite "bug" – his little sister – inside it.

2. Blindfold yourself and then listen. The science teachers I train, do this for their sensory exercise. The effect never fails to surprise them. Some of them get goosebumps hearing water flow without seeing it.

3. Observe another creature other than a human for an hour. I think this beats the Pinoy Big Brother Series anytime. You will still be a voyeur but you get to take home insights about a whole new world of non-humans who have their own struggles in this world we share. Of course, the best is to observe them in the wild. But if there is really no other way, your pets or the ones in the zoo will do. 

4. Take a walk in the garden or along the beach with a kid and ask him/her questions about the natural world and listen to his/her answers. This will not only turn the tables on that inquisitive kid but also encourage him to think through answers to questions about natural life. This will also buy you the time you need to figure out the answers to their questions without looking like the family idiot.

5. Do your own chocolate experiment. Many claims have been said about chocolate – that it makes pre-menstrual days of women bearable, that it makes us "happy." Scientists say that these could be accounted for in part by the chemicals that set off neurotransmitters in our brain that give us a "high" (such as serotonin, anandamide, theobromine). So men, you may want to discover the effect of chocolate on the behavior of women with PMS by designing your own chocolate experiment. It may not only make you feel alive, you may also receive "near-death threats" hurled from your control group (chocolate-deprived women with PMS).

6. Make a trip to inner and outer space. I also do this to the teachers I train by letting them close their eyes and listen to a narrative that brings them from their seats to the farthest known parts of the universe. Then I let them watch a film called Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, narrated by the late Scientific American columnist Philip Morisson. It is a trip in scale, from a couple sitting on a picnic blanket, moving on in size by a power of ten with each succeeding frame. It is not just a trip from the small (humans on picnic blanket) to the biggest (farthest known observable universe) but also from the small to the smallest (quarks). You can also try this – when I was about 9, I sat on the rocking chair with my brother who was six then, where we closed our eyes while I annotated our "rocking trip" with mounting excitement as we "traveled" from our seats, out of our house, town, island, continent, planet, to space. We got so carried away that our rocking chair turned over backwards as my brother and I rolled out in laughter picking ourselves up.

7. Let grandma’s heirloom diamond ring be grandma herself. I got this from the Profile book I mentioned in the intro. Apparently, a company called Lifegem in Chicago can turn the ashes of your dearly departed one into a one-carat diamond by subjecting them to extremely high pressure and temperature (diamond is essentially carbon under really high pressure and temperature which, before technology, could only be done by time – millions of years of it under the Earth). This may help kick off those spirits who feel sorry that grandma never left an heirloom since now grandma herself can be the heirloom, or for those who are beginning to sense that their current set of diamonds are beginning to look like mere stones.

8. Bookmark your experience with a scent. The best way to sensorily mark an experience in your memory is with a scent. Try to do something and accompany it with a scent. You will find later on, that when you smell that particular scent, you will also remember the experience associated with it. For business owners, this may make you feel not just alive but rake in extra revenues since experiments in France last year found that restaurants that diffused the scent of lavender found their customers staying for more and spending more.

9. Get on the roof or hood of your car, lie down and gaze on the clear night sky. I did this in Death Valley when there were no lights from the ground. The splendor was almost unbearable and the bonus was that I did this during the Perseid season when tens of shooting stars per second were occurring right before my wondering eyes. The sky seemed like a dome with stars that were so close together that I, too, felt like I was a star and being watched by any one of them. You can, of course, do this on any clear night in a place where the lights are not bright enough to obscure the night sky. Remind yourself, too, that a new year means we get to circle around our own star once more.

10. Know everything there is to know about an animal that is regularly eaten. Know how many genes chickens, goats, cows and pigs have. How did they evolve? How did humans pick them out from the wild to be domesticated? In a lovely feast once, I told a friend that if we were meant to eat so much, we should be capable of ruminating (having three or more stomachs to store food in like cows and camels). My friend said, "Ruminate? You mean we go to our room and eat there?"

11. Fool your genes. Whenever I think twice of whether I should be patient or generous to a stranger, I instantly imagine that he or she is family, thus fooling my genes. Evolution makes us naturally protective only of our own kin but the unique thing about the way humans evolved is we also evolved with a will and an imagination to still choose to go beyond what genes dictate. Our public officials may want to try this option if they are feeling too protective of their kin, at the cost of the service they swore to give to the public. Perhaps, the "weaker" their genes, the better their service will be.

12. Do a Bioblitz. I learned this in graduate school where we cordoned of an area, regardless of size, and listed as many living organisms that we could possibly find. It may help to have a microscope since a handful of soil can yield thousands of species of bacteria alone. This is to drive the point that we live not just with our next-door neighbors but among so many more, like the bugs gnawing at the leaves of the plants we brush against when we get to our cars. And if you are lucky and you chance upon the meanest-looking organism that science has not yet identified, you can name it after your favorite public official.

Yes, it is a new year in the same world but we can still experience being alive in so many different ways. Dare yourself to try one.

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