Alive (How to Enjoy Living)

By Ryan Peter

Life is meant to be enjoyed, but so few of us enjoy it to its fullest.

Most of us are tired of having to make life work and the never-ending quest to be content and find the peace and joy we're looking for is wearing us down.

We wonder - can we really be happy?

ALIVE shows where true contentment, joy, peace and adventure can be found. But it's found where we might least expect it, where no one taught us to look.

In ALIVE, Ryan Peter shares his philosophy and how he has managed to finally be content and joyful, in all circumstances.

We can finally enjoy living.

We can finally be alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan Peter
• Release date: May 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458076274

Ryan Peter

Ryan Peter is a writer, journalist and ghostwriter from Johannesburg, South Africa. He writes fantasy and sci-fi and anything to do with the "weird" while he enjoys conversing (and writing, of course) on topics such as faith and theology. His books are widely available at Amazon and other major online retailers. He is the author of "When Twins War", a fantasy epic; "Your Single Happiness"; "The Butcher's Shadow", an upcoming ghost story thriller; "Holy Sin" (upcoming); and a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, Treasure Island. Peter blogs regularly at his website in addition to being published in various media channels both online and offline.

Book preview

ALIVE

(How to Enjoy Living)

by

Ryan Peter

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Ryan Peter on Smashwords

ALIVE

(How to Enjoy Living)

Copyright 2011 by Ryan Peter

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Important

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version Living Translation, Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Front cover photo by Josef Faustbeck - http://www.smooth2.com

Cover design by Ryan Peter

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Be Alive

Chapter 2: Grace

Chapter 3: Why I Support Hedonism

Chapter 4: New Tastebuds

Chapter 5: Joy Everywhere

Chapter 6: Love

Chapter 7: Simple Living

Chapter 8: Riding Waves

Chapter 9: No Man is an Island

Chapter 10: The Book of Joy

Chapter 11: Weak Desires

References and Credits

About Ryan Peter

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Chapter 1: Be Alive

The purpose of this book is to present an outrageous, extraordinary and radical way of living. In fact, its purpose is to talk about truly living – feeling alive and being alive.

After all, life should consist of being full of joy.

I think we almost feel this instinctively. We know something is not all that right with us, with the world, and we often aren't sure what it is.

Most of us don't feel as if we're truly alive but feel more as if we're just surviving, and that's about it. The world is about survival of the fittest, and all that, and we've got to make this life work.

Motivational books and speakers may only help us for a time, but after they're done real life kicks in again. Our high ends. And we need another pick-me-upper. So we buy another book, go to another conference, visit another website, go on another holiday, have another child, embark on a new project, or do whatever it is that gave us the boost we got last time.

Not that any of that stuff is actually bad. Of course it isn't. But like there are certain nutrients our bodies need every day so that everything is working properly, there is something deeper that we need for our souls that all this stuff doesn't really give us. It can help us, of course, but we can't rely on these things to be our everything.

We struggle to live in the moment because the moment seems so mundane and boring. We dream of adventure but never quite get there. We look at others and think they've gotten to where we've gotten and we get jealous.

Some of us start taking a realistic look at ourselves and begin to believe we're failures. Others of us ignore our inability to really enjoy life and just get on with it, thinking this is all there is. Still others decide that they're going to ignore all of reality and live in their own world instead. All of these can go to extremes that are hurtful for us and others.

But there is another way. A way that leads to life and living, where every mundane moment takes new meaning, purpose, and brings with it joy.

What is this 'secret' to living? That's what this book, in a very short while, will attempt to cover.

This book won't try and skim the surface but will try and scratch deeper. Many of us don't want to go deeper – it's a little too dirty down there, a little too personal. But there's really no other way. Gangrene requires a surgeon's knife to cut it away before it spreads. So we need to cut away the disease of joyless living at its root before it spreads and starts affecting our futures, our bodies, and those we love.

This isn't a motivational book or something that will encourage you to go skydiving or surfing, although we should do things that are fun as life isn't always about being serious and sombre. It's cool to get deep but it's also cool to be lighthearted. We have to keep the balance right.

This is about finding a life of joy and contentment and peace - and fun. It's not some inch deep hedonistic pleasure-pursuing message about throwing caution to the wind, it's about finding true depth in enjoying life.

In reality I will raise the banner for a type of hedonism, a type of pursuit of pleasure – but it's not the kind of hedonism you're probably thinking when you read that word.

I've purposely tried to make this book short and easy to read. That's not because life isn't complex, but only because there actually isn't an answer to everything. The sooner we come to grips with the 'I don't know' about life the better we can actually just get on with it and enjoy it. Life can also be simple if we want it, and I think that most of us would like it to be much more simpler.

We shouldn't try and approach life as if it's a kind of machine that just needs formulas punched in it in order to work. Our society is obsessed with answers, so much so that it even tries to put God in a box and manipulate God to do things for us if we do 'good things' in our life. The system of Karma tells us that we have to offset enough good deeds against our bad deeds in life to come up tops. Whether we know it or not, or call it something else, we follow that system almost blindly.

Even those who don't believe in God approach life in this kind of way. As long as we do the formulas right then life should work. If life doesn't work it must be someone else's fault or some circumstance's fault. Or, maybe it's just because we're failures and will never amount to anything.

In the West, we live in a therepeutic culture as well. Psychology really has taken over and presented itself as the saviour of the world's problems. If we understood why we behave the way we do, we believe we can tweak our behaviour and make life work at last.

The issue is there is some truth to it all. Of course by changing our behaviour we can change our circumstances. And if we change our circumstances we can live happier. I agree. But this doesn't always work. There are a trillion things out of our control, and the core thinking that joy is found by just changing our circumstances is flawed.

It's not our circumstances that need to change, primarily, it's us that need to change. And it's not just our behaviour or our habits that we need to change, it's our thinking that needs to change. And our thinking won't change, for the good at least, until our heart changes. And the trouble is, if we're honest, our hearts are stubborn things. They won't change. So we come up with philosophies to accommodate it and ease our conscience at the same time.

I realise that this is perhaps a fairly simple commentary on modern day society. But there is no space here to go into details. I mention it to simply show that many of us are stuck in a rut and need to break through from the above kinds of thinking.