Got Awe?
Lately, I’ve been prone to tumbling into what I characterize as awe-less-ness.
Awe-less-ness? That sounds suspiciously like lawlessness. Please don’t tell me that’s so.
Nope, no lawlessness. (Feel better?)
OK, I’m going for it, hook, line, and sinker. What is this awe-less-ness thing?
Oh, just my hum-drum, everyday, existence, lived in a state of monochrome. Plain old black-and-white. (Yawn.) I want more than monochrome! Technicolor, please, I’ve been missing you! Where are the shooting stars, luminescent colors, life excitedly lived?
Where? In unexpected ordinariness. That’s where. In the email I received from an old friend, an email devoid of any punctuation or capitalization. None. My friend’s connectedness to deep wisdom would only be interrupted by our culture’s practicalities, like punctuation and capitalization. (Boo, hiss!) A missing comma here or there, so what. (My seventh-grade English teacher would have had a fit, but we never got along anyway.)
There is no speed-reading through my old friend’s emails. I need to go slowly and let the meaning rise up, just as when reading unfamiliar poetry. Then a light goes on. My own deep light. Technicolor, at last! Yay! The technicolor is so damn ordinary, so right in front of me, that I tend to overlook it. From my friend’s email:
“we don't often get to choose the path or method to a lesson. we need to be on the path and hopefully with gratitude and faith find the awe in the journey”
Awe! I’ve been awe-less! I want my awe back! Ignoring my own, built-in, awe prism. (You’ve got an awe prism too, you know.) Yep, I’ve only been engaging in an everyday, quickie, peering at life. Waiting, just waiting, for life to bring awe to me.
Nope, nope, nope. “The magic is in our own conjuring.” Taking my time, seeing people, objects, life, passing right in front of me. Like the reading of new poetry, slowly, awaiting my own reactions, feelings, and thoughts to bubble up. Paying attention, rather than my usual speeding on to the next thing.
That’s where the chemistry of awe is. It’s not solely what life plants in front of me. It’s the lived me, my history, in a dance (probably a tango) with this external world. There you go! Awe. Easy, accessible, living with greater personal attention to the very life in front of me. Taking a little-bitty extra time to experience what bubbles up…
Hey, what do you think of t-shirts? “Got Awe?”