Goose bumps

When was the last time you got goose bumps? Don't remember? Maybe you remember the first time it happened. Or maybe you remember getting goose bumps with a first kiss, or when a friend said just the right thing, or when some music made you swoon or when you arrive at your favorite place on Earth.

Frightened goose bumps are goose bumps, too, as R.L. Stine's children's books attest. But the goose bumps I prefer are brought on by pleasure or awe.

A young woman in a TV commercial gets goose bumps from eating a chocolate peppermint candy. We've all tasted something that good.

Life, as mundane and repetitive as it can sometimes seem, isn't really. Many kinds of thrills are available to us. We just have to be ready to appreciate them. We have to be on that wavelength or they will just pass us by.

Goose bumps say you're tuned in to the frequency of aliveness the world is broadcasting on. Two people experiencing the same event can be moved or not. Which would you choose? The difference is the difference between accepting what is and expecting what can be. When we're lined up with the best possibilities in our lives, problems don't bother us. When our primary concern is to be happy, to feel joy, irritations are brushed away like a fly.

We know ourselves to be so much larger than the ifs and buts that come up. We are not born to care about ifs and buts to appreciate all we have been given: Life, breath, at least five senses, faith, hope and love. Goose bumps could be viewed as an anatomical phenomenon, a response to cold or the result of an adrenaline rush brought on by fear.

Another way to look at goose bumps, the kind that arise when you're feeling joy, is as a sign that everything is all right. You didn't fight the feeling that produced them.

Children get goose bumps all the time, so often they're scarcely noticed. Over time a filter develops between ourselves and what we feel. The candy is labeled good or not good instead of simply being experienced. We conform to the way others who've grown up view the world.

Being alive can be taken for granted. That's another form of conformity. Instead, appreciate the warmth of your bed, the way your body feels while bathing, just being. You can appreciate just being.