What about Everything?

MANALIVE, the Glory of God is Man Fully alive, live--these are phrases we keep throwing around. But what does it mean to be fully alive. Some people believe that this means to live, life on the edge, always moving, chasing the next adrenaline rush. Yet, to be fully alive can mean the exact opposite for to be truly alive means to be contemplating the eternal. this then will influence how you see and react with the world, allow you to view it with wonder and thanks and see it with a fresh perspective. This need not require a degree in philosophy, just an orientation towards truth and a willingness to question and to ponder. Yet this is something sadly lacking in todays world, which is not prone to introspection.

Josef Pieper says In Defense of Philosophy, "People are not commonly disposed, as they are simply not in the appropriate mood, to reflect on the ultimate meaning of reality as such. As a rule, therefore, we should obviously not expect that the philosophical experience and the philosophical quest would be such a common occurrence. ‘How is it with the world as such?’—this is not a question one asks while building a house, while going to court, while taking an exam. We cannot philosophize as long as our interest remains absorbed by the active pursuit of goals, when the ‘lens’ of our soul is focused on a clearly circumscribed sector, on an objective here and now, on things that are presently ‘needed’—and explicitly on anything else. (In intelligent company one can, of course, readily and always discuss any philosophical ‘problem’ tossed to it from the outside like a question on a quiz show. This is not what I am talking about. Here, I understand the philosophical quest as an existential experienced centered in the core of the human mind, a spontaneous, urgent, inescapable stirring of a person’s innermost life.) More likely than not, therefore, a challenge is required that shakes the common and ‘normal’ attitude dominating—by nature and by right—man’s everyday life; a push is needed, a shock, in order to trigger the question that reaches beyond the sphere of mere material needs, the question as to the meaning of the world and of existence: to trigger the philosophical process.”