The Strange Feeling of Being Alive

There is a moment that comes to me maybe once a week. I am doing something ordinary, washing dishes or waiting for coffee to brew, and suddenly that I am here at all feels impossibly strange. Not strange in a bad way. Strange like looking at the word “spoon” until it stops meaning anything and you realize it is just marks on a surface.

Alan Watts had this feeling too. He described it in Still the Mind:

I am by nature a person who has the fundamental feeling that existence is extremely odd. Other people apparently think that existence is quite even — that is to say, ordinary — and not to be questioned, but I have always had in the bottom of my heart the sense that it is very strange indeed that I am here at all.

Most people, Watts observed, take existence for granted. They wake up, go through the day, go to sleep, and never stop to ask: what is this? How is any of this happening? That there is something rather than nothing barely registers.

But some of us cannot shake the feeling. And Watts had a curious relationship with it: he found it wonderful and unsettling at the same time.

The paradox of not taking it seriously

Watts added a twist to his observation:

This feeling is not something that I can just toss off, and then go on with my everyday business — and yet the curious paradox of this is that, at the same time, I do not take it seriously.

This is the part that matters. He did not try to resolve the strangeness. He did not reach for answers or explanations. He just let it be there and got on with things. The mystery was not a problem to solve. It was the background music of being alive.

I spent a lot of my twenties trying to explain away this feeling. I read philosophy books. I learned about neuroscience. I told myself consciousness is an illusion, an emergent property of neural firing. But the feeling did not go away. The explanations felt like talking about the menu instead of eating the food.

The problem with existence

Watts also identified something darker: the terror that underlies the wonder.

What that problem is about, at the sort of nitty-gritty level, is the very basic idea in our thinking that one must live, that we need to survive to go on. We feel we must go on, even though we know that we are not going to get away with it for very long.

We know we are going to die. Every cell in our body knows it. And yet we spend our lives trying to secure a future that will never arrive. We work, save, plan, worry, all against the backdrop of an expiration date we cannot cancel.

This is the existential problem that religion and philosophy have always tried to address. Most answers involve some form of denial: an afterlife, a legacy, a meaning that outlasts us. Watts suggested something different: stop trying to escape the problem and see it as part of the experience.

The strangeness is not a problem. It is the point.

What the strange feeling teaches

I think the oddness of existence is useful in a few ways.

It keeps you honest. When you remember that being here at all is improbable, you stop taking your constructs so seriously. The job title, the social status, the opinions you defend so fiercely. They are all built on top of a mystery that nobody understands.

It opens wonder. Children have this naturally. Everything is new. As adults, we trade wonder for familiarity. The strange feeling is a return ticket.

It reduces fear. If existence itself is strange, then losing it is not less strange. Death is part of the same mystery. You cannot solve the puzzle of being alive without including the ending.

Internal links

The feeling that the self is not as solid as it seems connects to the ego as a social fiction, where Watts argued that the self is more like a verb than a noun.

The mystery of consciousness is explored in consciousness circulation, which looks at how awareness flows through the body.

And the question of what life actually is has its own article: what is life, which examines different ways of approaching the question.

A practice for the strange feeling

If you want to explore this feeling intentionally, try this. Set aside five minutes. Sit somewhere comfortable. Take a few breaths. Then ask yourself: what is it like to be here? Not “what should I do” or “what is the meaning.” Just: what is the felt sense of being alive right now?

Do not look for an answer. Just sit with the question. The strangeness will show up on its own.

FAQ

Is feeling that existence is strange a sign of depression? Not necessarily. Existential discomfort can overlap with depression, but they are different. Depression flattens experience. The strange feeling intensifies it. If you are unsure, talk to a professional.

Does this lead to any conclusions about God? Watts was open to the word God but did not use it in a conventional sense. He described it as “the eternal energy behind this universe.” The strange feeling does not prove or disprove anything. It just points to the mystery.

Can everyone feel this? Most people have moments of it. Children feel it naturally. Adults tend to suppress it with routine and distraction. It is always available.

Does feeling the strangeness help with daily life? It helps with perspective. Small problems seem smaller. The pressure to succeed at everything loosens. You are still fully engaged. But the stakes feel different when you remember that none of this was guaranteed in the first place.