The Aliveness That Burns
When fear becomes your teacher instead of your enemy
I was mesmerized by the helicopters.
Standing on my back porch, watching them drop water on the wildfire that had come close enough to almost taste, I couldn't look away. The smoke was thick enough to turn the afternoon sky orange. The air smelled like the end of something. My phone kept buzzing with evacuation alerts I couldn't fully read because cell service had gone to hell.
But those helicopters. They moved with this deliberate grace, like dancers performing some ancient ritual of protection. Drop, circle, drop again. Each pass a conversation between human intention and elemental chaos.
I should have been panicking. Should have been loading my car with the things that matter most. Should have been doing what people do when wildfire comes calling at their doorstep.
Instead, I was enchanted.
Fear, it turns out, isn't always the opposite of aliveness. Sometimes it's the most alive thing in the room.
The Wild That Doesn't Ask Permission
A week ago, I wrote about the animal outside my tent. How my nervous system expanded into alertness without anxiety, how presence felt like a gift I could choose to receive or ignore. The wild was quiet that night. Patient. It moved past me like a whispered invitation to remember what it feels like to be fully awake.
The fire was different.
This wild didn't whisper. It roared. It didn't move past me like a gentle teacher offering wisdom. It moved toward me like a force of nature that couldn't care less about my spiritual growth or my capacity for presence.
The fire wasn't asking if I was ready to be alive. It was demanding that I figure out how to stay alive.
This is what the wellness world doesn't want to tell you about aliveness: it's not always beautiful. It's not always expansive. It doesn't always feel like coming home to yourself. Sometimes aliveness feels like your stomach falling out and helicopters on your horizon and the sudden recognition that everything you think you control is just borrowed time.
But we've been sold this gorgeous, sanitized version of embodiment where being "in your body" means feeling good in your body. Where aliveness is supposed to feel alive in all these photogenic-worthy ways. Where your nervous system is something to regulate rather than something to trust.
When Fear Becomes Your Compass
The moment I understood the fire was real—not just smoke in the distance but actual threat at my actual address—something shifted in my body. Not panic exactly, but this sudden, complete stillness. Like someone had pressed pause on everything that wasn't essential.
My stomach went cold. Not the flutter of nervousness, but this hollow, bone-deep chill that settled in and stayed. Fear is cold in my body. It's the feeling of your internal temperature dropping while everything around you burns.
But here's what surprised me: the cold wasn't just terrifying. It was clarifying.
All the noise in my head—the endless mental chatter about deadlines and grocery lists and whether I'd remembered to water the plants—just stopped. The fear burned through everything that wasn't immediately necessary, leaving only what mattered: listen, decide, act.
This is what fear does when it's not just anxiety dressed up as wisdom. Real fear, the kind that shows up when actual stakes are involved, doesn't scatter your attention.
It focuses it.
Like a lighthouse cutting through fog, showing you exactly what deserves your energy right now.
The Intelligence of Paralysis
When the evacuation alert came through—"GO" in all caps, like the phone was yelling at me—I froze.
Complete paralysis. Not the dramatic kind where you collapse in a heap, but this strange, hollow stillness where your body just... stops responding to your brain's increasingly frantic commands to move.
For what felt like hours but was probably minutes, I stood in my kitchen with my phone in my hand, unable to process what "GO" meant in practical terms. Go where? With what? How do you evacuate a life? The cell service was so broken I couldn't even see where the evacuation applied. No internet, no power. I was just frozen there, holding my phone like it might suddenly start making sense.
And since flames weren’t literally bearing down on me, the part of my brain that would jump into action wasn’t quite there yet.
People love to judge the characters in disaster movies who just stand there while chaos unfolds around them. But let me tell you something about that freeze: it's not stupidity. It's not weakness. It's what happens when your nervous system receives more information than it can immediately process.
The freeze isn't your aliveness abandoning you. It's aliveness in a form you've never been taught to recognize.
My body wasn't broken in that moment. It was doing exactly what nervous systems do when faced with threats that exceed their usual operating parameters: it was buying time. Creating space for my system to recalibrate when the normal rules stopped applying, between the alert and the action, between the reality of danger and the necessity of decision.
We've been taught to see the freeze as dysfunction, as evidence that we're not strong enough or prepared enough or brave enough. But what if the freeze is just another form of intelligence? What if paralysis is sometimes the most reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances?
The Moment Everything Starts Moving Again
Then it happened. That shift from frozen to functional, from paralyzed to purposeful. Not dramatic, not cinematic. Just this quiet click, like a circuit breaker resetting itself.
"Duh. Go."
That's literally what my brain said to itself. Not "you need to evacuate immediately" or "this is a life-threatening emergency."
Just "Duh. Go."
And suddenly everything was moving again. Not smooth, not graceful, but moving. I remembered the old OG Starlink I keep active for camping during the summer. I could connect it to my trailer's solar setup, get internet, figure out what the evacuation zone actually was, and if I was about to die (exaggeration), or just about to have a very long, very hot, very uncomfortable night.
The cold fear didn't disappear. It just relocated, settling into the background like having a fever—present but not overwhelming, informing but not controlling. I was scared and functional at the same time, which turns out to be its own form of aliveness.
What Fire Teaches That Silence Can't
The animal outside my tent taught me that aliveness could be a choice. Beautiful. Mystical. Picturesque-ready wisdom about being present to the mystery.
The fire taught me something the spiritual/wellbeing world doesn't want to hear: aliveness is sometimes not a choice at all. It's what happens when choice gets stripped away and all that's left is response.
The “animal outside” moment was aliveness you could put on a vision board. The fire was aliveness that burned your vision board to ash.
The wellness industry has convinced us that only the beautiful version counts. That real embodiment means feeling good in your body. That aliveness should feel alive in all the flowing, chakra-aligned ways.
What a load of gorgeous, dangerous nonsense.
Your guidance system includes responses you've been taught to see as problems to solve. The freeze, the disbelief, the cold fear that makes you feel like your stomach has fallen out—these aren't bugs in your system. They're features you haven't learned to recognize yet.
The mesmerizing quality of those helicopters wasn't separate from the terror of watching them fight to save my neighborhood. They were the same experience. Beauty and danger, fascination and fear, aliveness that terrifies and aliveness that enchants—all happening in the same moment, in the same body, to the same person trying to figure out how to be human when the stakes are real.
The Frequency You Don't Recognize
Your aliveness speaks in more languages than you've been taught to understand.
Sometimes it whispers in the dark like an animal moving past your tent. Sometimes it roars like fire on the horizon. Sometimes it freezes you in place until you remember you have a satellite internet connection and a way to find out if you're actually about to lose everything.
All of it is intelligence. All of it is guidance. All of it is your life force trying to keep you alive, awake, present to what's actually happening instead of what you think should be happening.
The mistake isn't feeling afraid when there's actual danger. The mistake is thinking fear means your aliveness is broken.
The mistake isn't freezing when your system gets overwhelmed. The mistake is believing paralysis means you're not brave enough.
The mistake isn't your mind going blank when reality exceeds your processing capacity. The mistake is believing confusion means you're failing.
The mistake isn't being human when you need to be superhuman. The mistake is apologizing for having a nervous system.
After the Flames
The evacuation order never came for my street. The fire moved in a different direction, chased by wind patterns, the incredible firefighters, and the simple luck of geography. I got to sleep in my own bed that night, windows closed against the smoke, no air conditioning in 99-degree heat, but home.
The cold fear took days to fully leave my body. I kept catching myself holding my breath, kept checking my phone for alerts that didn't come, kept looking at the horizon for smoke that wasn't there.
But something else lingered too. A strange kind of gratitude. Not relief exactly, but appreciation for my nervous system's full range. For the way it could freeze me when freezing was the intelligent response, then mobilize me when action became possible. For the way it could be terrified and functional, paralyzed and purposeful, enchanted and afraid all at the same time.
The animal outside taught me that aliveness could be gentle. The fire taught me that aliveness could be demanding. Both were right. Both were necessary. Both were my body's intelligence working exactly as designed, speaking in whatever language the moment required.
Your aliveness isn't broken when it doesn't feel beautiful. It's not dysfunctional when it responds to real danger with real fear. It's not failing you when it freezes in the face of overwhelming input.
It's just working at a frequency you haven't learned to recognize yet.
The wild is always moving nearby. Sometimes it breathes quietly outside your tent. Sometimes it burns on your horizon. Sometimes it freezes you in place until you remember what you need to remember.
All of it is alive. All of it is intelligent. All of it is yours to trust, even when—especially when—it doesn't feel like the aliveness you thought you wanted.
The helicopters are still beautiful. The fear is still cold. The freeze is still intelligent.
And you're still here, learning the full range of what it means to be awake in a world that never stops teaching you how many ways there are to be alive.
I would be remiss not to simply express my profound gratitude for the hundreds of firefighters and first responders who jumped into action. Because of their quick action and tireless efforts, no structures were lost. Can you believe it?
A wildfire erupted right next to a highly and fairly densely populated area in our WORST fire season, and they were able to save every home and protect every life.
The community came together. Livestock were evacuated to the county fairgrounds. Churches opened up as shelters. Irrigation rerouted. Donations flowed to take care of those who were evacuated.
I’m grateful. I’m appreciative. I’m proud of our community.
If Life As I See It resonates with you and you think others might find value in it too, consider recommending this publication to your readers or sharing this piece with someone who needs to read it.
About Alex
I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.
Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.
These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.
This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.
Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.
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Your gratitude for the first responders at the end makes me think that maybe we all have our own trauma response that activates first. Fire fighters are just that, fighters. Their aliveness comes from action. You, in both this moment and the wild animal, froze. Your alive as comes from absorbing the moment in stillness.
For myself, I tend to fawn in times of stress. So my aliveness comes from gushing gratitude.
I haven’t figured out what kind of aliveness lives in flight.
Alex, every single line in this piece captivated, planted a seed in my psyche. I will be pondering this yin and yang of aliveness. Thank you for sharing your gifts.
“The fire was aliveness that burned your vision board to ash.” This line made me laugh and also go, “Damnnnn!”