This is perhaps the toughest, and simultaneously, the simplest question to answer. It boils down to the essential age-old philosophical question: What are we here for? To love, to grow, to laugh, and to experience all that we can on this earth. It sounds wonderful and enlightening!

Yet why does it sometimes seem that the hardest thing of all to do is to love and truly be yourself in life? It takes a lot of courage. Perhaps if one thing has faded out of our race with time, it is just that:courage. As society becomes more inclined towards technology, consumerism and work, real emotion hides behind cold objects. We have become submerged in a hyperreality which sees us losing sight of our own faces and each others. The result is a painful sense of distance where impermeable boundaries have been drawn around us so as not to let each other in. We fear real faces, real raw emotions because we are so in the habit of hiding from them behind our tv screens and computer monitors. We have perhaps come to somewhat automate our responses towards each other.

This all sounds rather cynical, but lets call it an extreme illustration of civilization as it stands. There is real laughter and love everywhere around us and in every smile, and every heart. It just seems that this is not so easily expressed or given space in the everyday world of life and work anymore. I love festivals for this reason. People leave their inhibitions at the gates and become one huge, bizarre, anonymous but beautiful family. I remember giggling to myself as I sat on the tube home from glastonbury last year with all the daily London commuters. I received disapproving stares and was mostly ignored as i sat happily in the corner in my shorts, green tights, wellies, caked head to toe in dry mud. I felt overwhelmingly happy because i didn't care- i had experienced such a great love during the last few days with all those random people who would most probably be dawning their suits by tomorrow too.

Perhaps all I am getting at is that I think to feel truly alive and realise how much the people around us matter we need to lay down our hyperreal masks from time to time so that we don't feel like we are just playing a game. Perhaps we need to be more aware of death. To truly feel life one needs to be aware of one's raw impulsive survival instinct. Take humans before we got all civilised and complicated: neanderthal man had to fight for his right to party so to speak. The chaos of the natural world has become so numbed by order that we sometimes forget to feel what is most important. Life, in it's very essence, and love.

Learn more about this author, Rose C.
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