Several years ago I took my first trip out of the country. We started in the UK and then took the tunnel to France.
I did not at the time speak a single word of French. I'd had almost no exposure to the language.
On the ride between London and Paris it hit me that I had no plan for how to navigate in a place where I did not speak the language.
There was a thrill that accompanied the risk. It's hard to explain exactly what that emotion was, a, because I'm also autistic and my emotional vocabulary is stunted to put it simply, and 2, because I've never felt that exact way in any other circumstance.
It's the first thing that comes to mind when you ask about feeling fully alive. "How are we gonna do this omg what are we gonna do, what have we gotten ourselves in to???" It's not going to be the same for everyone. It's an ambitious question, probably intentionally ambiguous. It's the type of thing that autistic people, in my experience, have difficulty exploring.