Learning to Be Astonished
When I was a child, I loved gazing at the stars, imagining they were looking back at me, that we shared a secret, and that their twinkling was their way of winking at me.
My dad explained that the stars are balls of fire, gas and dust, millions of miles away. He said the universe extends infinitely and is still expanding. This amazed me, and made my head hurt when I tried to grasp it, but I kept trying.
On an airplane one time, I gazed at the blanket of clouds beneath us and marveled that we were really in the sky. My dad went right to that place of marveling with me. He held up his plastic cup of water, and said, what about this cup? Isn't it amazing too? What would a caveman think if he could see this cup? See how the rim is a perfect circle, how the plastic is perfectly transparent. Feel how light it is, and it doesn't break if you drop it. What magic is this? In his hand, the plastic cup became as miraculous as the flight above the clouds.
Though I didn’t become a scientist, I still love to contemplate the physical nature of things—relishing the quest to understand, the challenge and playfulness, and the breathtaking moments of awe.
Recently I read Michael Singer’s new book, Living Untethered, in which he explains for the lay person how the universe came into being—how hydrogen clouds formed after the Big Bang, and how the other elements were forged in the fusion reactions of stars--how this process from billions of years ago created every atom on earth, and every atom in our bodies.
His point is that we are literally made out of stars. When we look up at the stars, we’re not just seeing something beautiful and incomprehensible. We’re seeing where we came from. Every atom in our bodies is billions of years old and came from those twinkling lights, those gargantuan explosions trillions of miles away. Many of the elements could not be made in a regular star like our sun, but only in supernovae and neutron star collisions.
Take a moment to absorb that. Look at your hands, feel your heart. Those atoms you see and feel are billions of years old. From trillions of miles away. Forged by unimaginable power. They came together to form you.
How does it make you feel to contemplate this? For me, it brings awe, like something inside me opens unexpectedly, along with a warm, uplifting sense of being held in belonging, knowing in a new way that the universe is part of me and I am part of it.
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
In our urban age of workaholism and information overload, it’s easy to forget about the stars, leave science to the experts, leave wonderment for children, and narrow our gaze to the areas where we can feel confident and in control.
But awe is an important cousin to gratitude. When we look up from our daily grind and allow awe in, every moment of our lives can appear miraculous.
What made it possible for you to be reading these words right now, for me to be talking to you from afar? How many people had to work expertly at their jobs, from antiquity to now, to enable you to be here, clothed and comfortable, understanding these squiggles on a screen? Open the door and step outside. How are the hundred trillion cells in your body cooperating for you to take this very breath?
Awe reminds us what a privilege it is to be right here, right now, benefiting from the creative work of generations, and countless intricate natural processes.
To nourish our spirits with awe, we can make each day a treasure hunt for things that inspire it. The poet Mary Oliver mastered this practice:
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird -
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished…
We can all learn to be astonished. We can look around, and say to ourselves, “This is real.” We can touch something and think of how it came into being.
We can see how everything defies comprehension, but still appears to us, winks at us.
And let ourselves fall into awe.
Thanks to awakin.org for posting the Mary Oliver poem. Here it is in its entirety.
