Into the Blue: Awestruck
Lately, when I wake up in the middle of the night, my racing mind crosses over the potatoes I planted a few weeks ago in my garden. As soon as I remember the buried spuds, my mind settles there, in the dirt, and my nighttime angst of being awake too soon is pacified. 'At least I planted potatoes,' I think to myself as I roll over, and listen to the rain fall. Knowing those potatoes will turn from one to many, and we will eventually dig for them, like buried treasures, for our dinner, brings me a peace I can't quite fathom.
"3, 2, 1..." the eight-student band filled the elementary school's entryway with a loud funky beat that grabbed all the good in that April Friday afternoon and threw it into our bodies so none of us could help but feel joyful. As the beat went on, parents wandered the halls looking at art made by their children and their children's peers. There were quilts, clay bunnies, cardboard farm animals, felt collages, whimsical ink flowers on brown paper, and painted garden beds revealing the underground lives of radishes, carrots, and potatoes. Suddenly, without warning, I began to cry. I turned my face toward a wall of murals and wiped my eyes. The funky beat drowned my stifled sobs. "I don't know why I'm crying," I said to Roo. He laughed and put his hand on my back as I regained my composure.
The water to our outdoor shower is back on, which means all showering is outside between now and the end of October. Every time I walk outside in my towel, my senses revel the sights, sounds, smells and sensations of our backyard, especially after a rainstorm. These days I am overcome by the smell of the viburnum tree planted nearby. It smells so good, and it catches me by surprise every time. Again and again, I hurry downstairs, lost in thought about where I have to be or what needs to be done next, I step outside, and I'm instantly struck, present and grateful at once, to the thrilling, fleeting smell of the pink and white flowers.
Springtime unfailingly reawakens my sense of awe to how everything around me/us (inme/us) is growing...evolving, decaying, and dying. In his Book, Awe, Dacher Keltner describes awe as connecting us to the systems "of interrelated elements working together to achieve some purpose" (pp. 244-245). He claims when we look at life through a "systems lens," we understand ourselves as parts of a whole: we perceive how we exist/live in relation to other beings, patterns of interdependence emerge, and we understand life/death as process rather than fixed. There are systems constantly at work, holding us all together, ensuring awe continues, even after death.
Planted potato spuds will continue to grow into multitudes. Our children will someday attend their children's art exhibits and funky music concerts. Someone will smell viburnum trees long after I'm gone. But this spring, I will enjoy the potatoes growing in my garden with family and friends, I will share with fellow parents the joy of watching our offspring create art and music, and I will wonder how many others are smelling viburnum trees in their backyards this April. In moments of everyday awe, I'm connected to past, present and future; I lose my sense of time and self. There is a vast feeling of interconnectedness, followed by a mysterious, often fleeting, knowing.
You know what I mean, right, when I talk about awe? Maybe you remember it best from big life moments like holding your child for the first time, or holding the hand of a loved one in the moments before they pass, or maybe you find awe in art, or nature, or science, or movement...regardless of where we find "it," we know "it" the moment "it" hits us. Keltner claims that because of our individualist culture, the English language does not have a rich vocabulary to capture a sense of being connected to things larger than the self (p. 243). The resonance of this claim depresses me. Western culture's radical and defining focus on the self narrows our experiences of awe. Feeling part of the vastness of life, across time and species, is crucial to our wellbeing and evolution. When we feel connected to a community or part of an ecosystem, we are kinder and behave in ways that take other beings into account as well as the air we breathe, the water we drink, the oceans we swim in, the forests we walk through.
There is a lot of brokenness around us right now. There is a climate crisis. There is a mental health crisis. We're living in the midst of tremendous unrest, dis-ease, and trauma. In line with our Western values, we are hyper-focused on how the individual can mitigate their pain. I wonder what would happen if we shifted our focus to healing the collective in concert with healing ourselves. What if we seek out more awe in our lives? Bringing mindfulness and richer language to our experiences of everyday awe will remind us of our part in something bigger than our lonely, traumatized selves. We are wired to be collaborative and open, but trauma disconnects us from our people, places, and purpose. Let's use awe--the peace you find in your garden, the tears that come at your child's art show, or the goosebumps you feel in your backyard--to reconnect those wires. In 1861, in his inaugural address, when our country was divided on the brink of a civil war over the moral issue of slavery, Abraham Lincoln called on "the better angels of our nature" to restore peace and unity. Today, thanks to neuroscientists like Keltner, we have scientific evidence that proves when we are connected to the beings and places around us, "the better angels of our nature" are activated. We share, we give, we play our part, we appreciate; we become the gardner, the mother, the witness...
As always, thank you for reading,
Georgia
PS The above photo was taken en route to Stewart Island, the southernmost part of New Zealand, not to mention my favorite spot.