Someone once asked me: "Are you alive, or just surviving?" At the time, I really didn't see what the difference was, since life was survival it seemed: Not quite like the bad guy in "the World is not Enough" (which is playing on my side screen), who feels nothing at all due to a bullet in the brain, but still, feeling less than really alive.
It took me many years to notice that I was merely reacting to my environment rather than shaping my own World. Is one better than the other? I have noticed that trying to shape my world by acting in the physical doesn't work half as effectively as using mind over matter