“Bottoms Up!”, people say when they want you to finish a drink, get closer to intoxication, or avoid the bitter tasting liquid you are confronted with. My granddad often used that phrase whilst I was growing up to teach me to avoid the pungent taste of medicine and to take it in immediately. The “Bottoms Up!” ideology has worked for me my entire life because I have been taught to avoid the repulsing bitter taste of anything, perhaps this has compelled me to dive into situations often, but also to avoid pain. Today I sit here many years later asking myself “What makes one human?” and the answer that I give myself is that a vivid human experience is one that contains a whirlwind of emotions. Feelings that range from hate, love, happiness, sadness, and pain. Pain allows you to strengthen your human experience, and perhaps pain is the best way to appreciate joy. The contrasting of human feelings allow us to feel things with more passion, without pain, joy wouldn’t feel the same way, without hate, love wouldn’t feel as deep.
To be human, we often need to dive into situations, and perhaps, the younger me has experienced “Bottoms up!” as a way to avoid a foul tasting liquid, but as I grow the idea has much more meaning. To me, now it means jumping into situations without knowing what to expect. It’s a little like jumping into cold water and shutting your eyes, because you’re scared of what it’ll feel like to be cold, but ultimately you feel relaxed and at peace under water. Perhaps, to truly bottoms up, means to experience things you don’t know, and to allow yourself to feel whatever it is that you want. Perhaps it means taking risks, in love, shopping, or even a night out. It could mean, diving into something better. Just because you’re on unfamiliar water doesn’t mean the waves will encapsulate you. Sometimes you just need to buy the ticket, and take the ride, and accept that adventure can range from a midnight drive to McDonalds, to being in a hot air balloon watching the sunset. We see beauty in the way that we want to, and it is often within fast paced unplanned moments, and perhaps it comes in an unexpected manner, such as droplets of rain, or the chords of a song, or even a verse in poetry that you relate to. Your existence is reliant on how you choose to experience your moments, the validity of your existence depends on your interpretation of it, and every moment you seek out to experience is the internal desire of your soul. Say yes to new experiences, plan less, feel more, and there it is, you’ll find yourself in the human experience.
The best experiences I have found come under conversations whilst watching the stars, or watching the city. It comes from sharing our human experience with someone else, or experiencing it within ourselves, perhaps with the assistance of art.
The human experience is a lot like a Nickelback song with the lyrics saying:
And as we lie beneath the stars
We realize how small we are
If they could love like you and me
Imagine what the world could be
This triggers the thought, that if people just watched the stars or the city for 10 minutes a day whilst listening to a heart stricken tune, the world could be a different place. Human’s would feel more of the human experience, and these fleeting moments would become something of permanence. My hope is that everyone dives into situations more, go for long drives in the night, listen more, observe more, listen to songs from the 90’s, read more, travel, but most importantly live life like it’s about to end.
Life is short y’all, so Bottoms up!
Whine&Winee 