I have been reading and re-reading this book Warm Bodies: A Novel (The Warm Bodies series) by Isaac Marion for quite a while. It's a zombified retelling of a Romeo and Juliet romance, where 'Romeo' here is a zombie, but it's so much more to me.
I'm not going to do a proper review of the whole book, I will just share with you the parts that have me thinking and feeling about LIFE.
How dead are you to your life?
I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses. - R
I feel like that I'm R when I was in my early twenties: mostly dead but hungering for moments of the real stuff - the passion, the glow that makes me alive, but I can't do that often because I just FEEL so much sometimes that it is overwhelming for me to keep up for long periods of time. I had to numb myself to whatever was going on in my life and to the people around me because I was an untrained empath. I still feel this way occasionally but using The Wonder Method™ has helped me greatly in becoming much more involved in my own life.
I think many people feel the way I do. There are lots of people numb themselves through addictions to work, social media, alcohol, food, sex just so that they can take their mind off the Here and Now. Why?
What is it about the Present that you are so afraid of, or even disgusted about? If you allow yourself to tune into your present life, and wonder what it might be about for you to feel deep satisfaction about your life, what comes to mind?
What kind of a life is worth living for, even if it's just for you?
I mean obviously, staying alive is pretty f**king important... but there's got to be something beyond that, right? - Julie
Living is not merely about staying alive. We fear being judged, being laughed at, being opposed and denied, so we focus our energies on being the SAME as the general public, to conform so we stay safe. But then again, what's the point of living if you can't be who you are? Or even have the courage to find out who you truly are?
It was written over four thousand years ago on clay tablets by people who tilled that mud and rarely lived past forty. It's survived countless wars, disasters, and plagues, and continues to fascinate to the day, because here I am, in the midst of modern ruin, reading it - Rosso
I love how this book uses the post-apocalyptic life to emphasize how that even in this devastating period, it's still important to hold onto your passion and run with it. The stuff of dreams is REAL, and even though you may have stuck to building your dream just for yourself, the fact that you even did it might even continue to inspire others long after you're gone.
Do not allow your darkness to overwhelm you.
I think we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find until our souls finally hit the rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some ... dark place. - Julie
Being human, we are a mixture of light and dark. We are empowered with free will, so sometimes we choose the path that leads to the dark side, just to have a taste of what it's like. But if we allow our darkness to overwhelm us, to consume us, it just becomes a never ending black hole that will never be able to satisfy itself.
Choose the Light. Choose what makes your heart sings. Choose the path with the sun shining on it. Choose LOVE. Choose HOPE.
I do hope that you've enjoyed this short sharing, and I really, really hope that you will go read Warm Bodies yourself, and be in tune with how your heart resonates with it.
