The Everyday Human

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 27

And then there’s the odd uneven times in between—I believe this is where humans fit best. We are transitory creatures by nature and so it is the days when nature herself has yet to decide what she wants to be and so becomes a little bit of everything that we feel most at home. This is a touchpoint in us as we are shapeshifters in our appearance from infant to adult to elder. In how we march from vibrance in morning to content in midday to pensive in the evening. In how we change emotions like masks, sometimes from one moment to the next. As nature dances between cool and hot, wet and dry, we move in step between young and old, happy and sad, angry and joyful.

It is no wonder we humans are the way we are—odd and uneven—when we are born of nature and of the seasons.

• Reflection title: The Odd and Uneven Human 
• Creative inspiration:  Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
• Reflection question: Which season, or rather which odd and uneven seasonal transition, inspires wonder in me? Which is a reflection of me at this time in my life?

This reflection or musing is not a part of our regularly scheduled programming. 

Think of it as a bonus. 

Bridges are necessary. You cannot get from point a to point b without them. And our lives are filled with bridges that MUST be crossed. 

What’s the alternative? Going back to where you came from? Not an option. The traffic of life goes one way. Stay there on the bridge forever? If you want to be stuck in place or run over by all those moving past you, sure, but who wants that?  Certainly not me and certainly not you. 

Embrace the bridge for what it is. Necessary, somewhat scary perhaps, but also beautiful. 

Sometimes they’re the only way to get where you’re going.

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 26

Music was a trusted companion through many challenging times, and it was right there with me through some of the best times as well. It is an alchemy of sorts. It has the ability to change your mood from somber to happy or slow and lethargic to energized. It inspires movement. It inspires thought. It gives us chills and moves us to tears. It brings people together in ways that nothing else can. Pack hundreds of thousands of human beings into a stadium to listen to another single human or group of humans make sounds with their vocal chords and hands? What a thought!

It is one of the most deeply human and awe-inspiring things. It is a language of expression in its own right. Different from speech, from body language, from any other form of communication or emotional proclamation.

Now, I’m going to go pick up that guitar in my office that I can’t play very well, but that I play nonetheless because it makes me happy. How about you?

• Reflection title: Confessions of a Music Addict
• Creative inspiration:  Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare 
• Reflection question: What is my relationship with music? When has it moved my body and spirit, and when has it moved me to tears?

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 25

Lose yourself in the stars and the thought of how miniscule you are in the vastness of the universe. Lose yourself in the thought that you are but one soul among billions trying to make it just as you are in a mischievous and mercurial world. Be shattered by the magnitude of the mountains and lose your mind contemplating the vastness and mystery of the sea. But don’t forget to turn away when you’ve had enough. Don’t forget to, when you need to, shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.

• Reflection title: The Antidote for Awe
• Creative inspiration:  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
• Reflection question: Have I lost myself in wonder and awe to the point of feeling too insignificant? Do I need to ground myself once in a while and remember that while I am small, my life is still mine and still matters?

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 24

They sit in the pews of Sagrada Família, looking up at the cavernous, intricate ceiling and stained-glass windows.

“Do you know when construction began on this basilica?”

“I don’t know.”

“Antoni Gaudí began construction here in 1882 and since then—”

“Do you know the reason for it all?” says the know-nothing.

“Well, it was inspired by a bookseller named—” replies the know-it-all.

“No,” says the know-nothing. “Not of this place. Of it all. Do you know the reason for it all? The purpose behind it. The why. The answer to the big question.”

“Ah,” says the know-it-all, thinking for a moment. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Me neither,” says the know-nothing. “But this seems a good enough reason.”

“What’s that?”

“To sit here, looking up at this ceiling”—and then a smile—”with you.”

“Ah,” says the know-it-all. “I think so, too.”

• Reflection title: Don’t Be Afraid To Don’t Know
• Creative inspiration:  Mark Twain, The Man Behind the Humor
• Reflection question: Am I afraid to admit that I don’t know sometimes? Am I always seeking an answer? Or am I gratified to admit that I don’t know something?

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 23

Awe is a double-edged sword. 

In a way, it satisfies us. Certain types of it (for there are many, and not all must be grand and induced by nature) allow us to proclaim that we were there, as Crane’s man did. It allows us to declare that we scaled the mountain, sailed the ocean, or reached the stars. But with that elevation, we are humbled. It shines a light on our flaws, our pettiness, our smallness—bringing us awareness. And then it dissolves us like salt thrown into boiling water, and we relish it, for knowingly or not, that is what we seek: to feel ourselves elevated in one moment like gods looking down upon their creations, and then obliterated into nothingness the next. 

We can never be just one thing. But that’s not a bad thing—it’s a very human thing.

• Reflection title: Raise Me Up and Cut Me Down
• Creative inspiration:  Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination
• Reflection question: What awe-inspiring event in my life raised me up in one moment and then cut me down in the next? Am I aware of these dueling feelings brought about by the same experience?

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 22

I step up onto the seat now, looking into the ocean. Slate gray, some blue. I have no idea how deep it is—maybe anywhere from 30 to 50 to 80 feet out this far. And I have no idea what lurks below those waves, but my mind likes to guess at it. Fish, sharks, squid, dolphins, plenty of jellyfish, maybe whales, maybe . . . a kraken. Every true adventurer of the sea has to encounter the mythical beast at least once, right?

I don’t know how long my mind wanders as I watch the rollers and stare into the depths, but there’s something mesmerizing about it. Something that calls you to it. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that both humans and Earth are about 70% water. Maybe it’s the salt in our blood and sweat looking for their cousin in the ocean. Maybe it’s the mystery and danger. So vast and powerful, deadly and beautiful. The life it gives, and the countless lives it's taken since we first felt compelled to return to it.

Someone back on the stern calls to me, asking if I want to eat. But I just take off my shirt and step off the bow. The water is a shock, cold and clean. Creatures swim below me.

And so I swim, filled with wonder and awe and terror and joy. 

Filled with life.

• Reflection title: Do You Long for the Secret of the Sea?
• Creative inspiration:  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Secret of the Sea"
• Reflection question: When did I last ponder the secret of the sea? Does it inspire me? Terrify me? Both?

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 21

It’s an extraordinary little universe back in that compost pile. The cycling of life and death, the plants beginning their lives there as sprouts to one day venture out into the big, wide garden where they will fulfill their purpose, die, and then return to the place they came. 

As I work the compost, watching the worms and wasps and flies do their work, and as I sift through the seedlings, I wonder where the atoms that those seeds and sprouts and plants are made up of have been and what they’ve seen. I wonder at the other lives they’ve lived.

And as I transplant the sprouts to the garden, I wonder where the atoms which make up you and me have been and what they’ve seen across the universe. I imagine their journey started loud and violent, but as they went, it became quiet and beautiful.

• Reflection title: The Compost Universe
• Creative inspiration:  Carl Sagan, Cosmos
• Reflection question: Have I considered how small I am—and for how long the matter which I am made of has existed? What does it say about my time here now—my problems, hopes, and dreams?

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 20

You have to imagine. You have to envision in your mind how you would live in different circumstances. How you would live if you had more time to do the things that mattered most to you. How you would live if you could spend more time in nature, standing still in the middle of the day watching a butterfly until it flew off into the sky. How you would live with more time to share with your partner, kids, friends—laughing, smiling, dancing, crying—doing the real human stuff.

That’s the first step. Seeing it is great, but it’s not enough. So next you’ve got to plan. Get a notebook. Get up early, move your body a little, make a pot of coffee, and get to thinking. Get to writing down those thoughts. Paint the picture of the life you want and figure out what the first step is to getting there. Making a plan with your partner? Going back to school? Quitting your job? Remembering what it is you’re passionate about and what is essential and making that your true north?

If you could do it—if you can imagine and then build it—how would you live then?

• Reflection title: Well, How Would You?
• Creative inspiration:  Mary Oliver, "How Would You Live Then?"
• Reflection question: Let me imagine the improvement (or improvements) I want to make in my life. What’s the first step I need to take to get there?

August: On Wonder and Awe

August 19

Reading the fantasy stories of Jacques’ Redwall, Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Haydon’s Symphony of Ages, and countless comic books, stole me away from a life that I sometimes did not wish to inhabit, and thrust me into fantastical worlds and realms with magic, sorcery, powers, heroes, villains, and breathtaking landscapes. 

As I was reading these stories, I became other people. The young boy from Amityville became a holy knight of Redwall Abbey, a brave and humble hobbit from the Shire, a stoic bastard son of nobility from Winterfell, or a roguish card-slinging mutant from Louisiana. Living these lives gave me a break from my own. Like for so many people, they allowed me time to breathe, to step away from the yelling and the violence, from the schoolwork and the bullies. They brought me to places I never could have imagined. They shocked me with the unthinkable evils enacted by villains, and they widened my eyes and dropped my jaw with the brave and selfless and noble deeds of the heroes. They filled my young mind (and now my 40-year-old mind) with wonder.

Read every chance you get. It’s wonderful to take in stories through other media, but reading is something special in its own right. It’s a deeply human thing sending another’s thoughts directly into your brain, and it’s one of our superpowers—granting us the ability to live another life, to inhabit other worlds, and to learn so much about others and ourselves in doing so. 

• Reflection title: Worlds Are Waiting
• Creative inspiration:  George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
• Reflection question: What lives have I lived through reading? How has it helped me? Can I forgo other uses of time like television and social media to read more?