Transcript
Speaker: what's up fellow humans and welcome to a little slice of awe and wonder a podcast about my two favorite emotions. Um, this week is a really small slice. Uh, I found an old essay that I wrote man, like a bunch of years ago, must've been, um, but I thought I'd share it with you and it's related to a lot of what we've been talking about on this podcast already. Um, and it's,
Speaker: Kind of the thing that I'm going to share in my weekly Awe and Wonder newsletter. So if you'd enjoy getting some small slices of digital Awe in your inbox, um feel free to sign up in the link in the description.
Speaker: and and I saw a video this week just scrolling I think maybe it was a YouTube short or an an IG reel or something like that but there's this old dude talking about a tree and he was just saying imagine you're an alien coming to earth and you're seeing a tree for the first time you know it's it's this huge, weird structure. And it seems like it's a million different things all at once. You know, it's a whole ecosystem. You see the different crevices in the tree. You see the ants climbing on it. You see the leaves, each thing being so complex. And so you look at it, you ask your human guide, ah what is this thing? And they say, ah, that's just a tree. You know, and so the next time you see it, you'll have that same attitude. Oh, just a tree. You'll label it and and get on with life.
Speaker: And in this video, he's like, just stop it. Stop labeling it. Let the magic seep back into your perception of that thing. ah We have this sort of cynical tendency to to reduce our experience and and pretend that we know what this thing is just because we've labeled it. It's our brain's tendency to find patterns and create useful maps and diagrams of our experience. And you know it's great um because if we were processing everything all at once, we wouldn't be able to function.
Speaker: But it is our folly to start treating those maps as the actual experience. It is a way of reducing this beautiful, complex experience to our simple aims.
Speaker: and We forget those original moments of seeing the real tree and seeing the complex, amazing ecosystem that it is. And so um this essay is about, you know, when you're a kid, those moments of really seeing a thing for what it is and experiencing the magic of it. So this one's called the rainbow parachute.
Speaker: Every once in a while during elementary school, the PE teacher would take out this huge rainbow parachute, and we would play various games with it on the soccer field. To be honest, I can't remember the point of any of the games, but I remember most of the class holding the edges of what seemed to me at the time to be an enormous flexible cathedral blowing in the wind, and when the parachute was lifted up, colored magic light poured in through its diaphanous stained glass curtains.
Speaker: The lucky kids who got to run around underneath the parachute and experience the majesty of this cathedral look like they're having the time of their lives. There must have been way more moments like this scattered throughout elementary school years, so but this is one of the first times I can really remember experiencing awe. I hadn't thought about this memory in ages, so but recently had a flash of nostalgia from reading a book on the beach while underneath a thin blanket to protect myself from the sun. The light was pouring through that multicolored blanket, just like the parachute, and I felt bathed in the warmth of the sun and the old memory.
Speaker: It was unexpected and beautiful to feel this wave of nostalgia and magic for a moment. It was like experiencing childhood again, fully engrossed in the mystery of life, unaccustomed to the layers of judgment and critical overthinking that cloud our daily experience. After the initial moments of unexpected peace and awe came a stream of questions, judgments, and inner dialogue. How can I get more of this? Why didn't I feel this way all the time? How can I stay here longer? How can I recreate this feeling?
Speaker: All of this grasping quickly made my attention to the magic dissipate. It took me out of that already fleeting moment and into my overactive nervous brain. I'm definitely not opposed to finding that beauty more, but grasping at it and trying to manufacture it maybe isn't the answer. Maybe chasing the past is not as fulfilling as it would seem to my narrow and limited mind. Part of the magic comes from the unexpected nature of these events and the attention you give to them.
Speaker: It's a play of external and, importantly, internal factors. External factors, of course, can't be completely controlled. Just think of the global pandemic at the time. Despite all of our plans, things can change instantaneously. However, internal factors, such as attention and awareness, can open us up to the possibility of seeing like a kid again, separated from the judgments that cloud experience.
Speaker: I had a similar realization walking through a museum on two separate days. The first I was hurried, running through exhibits trying to see as much as I could in the hour and a half I had, but the experience was muddled. I can't remember feeling any real inspiration or awe during it. In contrast, I spent the second time only looking at three exhibits. After giving my full attention in time to just one of those things, I felt my eyes open in a new way, so to speak.
Speaker: I could really process things in full detail and see the magic of the interplay of colors, lines, and shapes. Unlike the reduced acuity of the previous visit, I glimpsed the same exhibit from a different angle in Fuller Majesty, a kid looking up through the rainbow parachute.
Speaker: I often like to dwell on what things were magic like that in my childhood, and it's still certainly fun and important to think about. But focusing on attention and awareness in the moment can open us up to the magic in the here and now. It can help us stumble upon the rainbow parachute in the mundane. As Marcel Proust wrote about daily life experience, the real voyage is not in finding new landscapes, but seeing through new eyes.
Speaker: All right, thank you all again. I hope you have a wonderful week. And again, if you're interested, I'll be sharing some little slices of digital on wonder in my newsletter, which you can sign up for in the show notes. And I'll try to add in one little snippet for each of the eight wonders of the world as described in the book, Ah, by Dacher Keltner.
Speaker: All right, everyone. Have a great week and I'll talk to you soon.
