Heroes Not Zombies

Awe is the sensation of connecting to what is greater than you. It’s a moment of dissolution of the self, to less apart from the whole, and more an inseparable part of the whole. It’s where boundaries and limits disappear. It’s expansive, stimulating and life enhancing.

In Keltner’s book about awe, he reports that many people experience it in nature. Here, I looked towards the far blue mountains, saw the vast stretches of bush in the middle distance and the Hadida taking off in flight from the foreground garden. And right in front of me, this astonishing sculpture, which captures a sense of liberation, of freedom, of transition, of aspiration to escape any worldly limitations and soar, just as the Hadida is about to do.

Awe-some.

Maybe this is something we don’t talk about enough, but what’s missing, so often, in this world, is love. Whether we see that aspect of love we call kindness, or the aspect we call compassion, or care, or whether it’s the aspect of desire, and passion, our world is enriched when we pay loving attention.

It’s a bit of a cliché to say that what the world needs is more love, but, it’s true, all the same. But even without such grand dreams as world peace, and a society based on kindness, rather than on ego and greed, we can still make our everyday lives better by loving more.

We pay attention to all kinds of things. Our attention is “caught”, is “attracted”, in order to sell us stuff….goods and ideas. The dominant way of catching attention, magnified by all the algorithms, is to stoke anger, shock, horror and outrage. But I can’t see that any of that is making the world a better place, and I certainly don’t have the experience that a day filled with anger and fear, is a good day.

When we pay loving attention, whatever we are “attending to”, is enhanced, and, here’s the great thing, by paying loving attention, we, too, are enhanced.

It’s a good day when we have filled it with love. It’s a good day when we have paid loving attention to the here and now. It’s a good day when we have felt love for others, humans, animals, and plants. It’s a good day when our hearts have filled, again and again, with love.

Try it for yourself, and see what you experience. Pay more loving attention.

In Dacher Keltner’s excellent book on awe, he reports how he and his team of researchers gathered personal descriptions of moments of awe from thousands of people around the world. When they analysed the stories they found that they could fit into about eight categories, which he calls “the eight wonders of life”.

The commonest one was “moral beauty” – witnessing courage, kindness or strength. Next were “collective effervescence”, “nature”, and “music”. I certainly recognise many experiences of all of those. The next one is “visual design”. I wasn’t completely sure what to make of that. I do love art. I love sculpture, especially in natural, or urban environments, but I wasn’t sure that architecture or interior design would be likely to give me an experience of awe.

Well, when I walked into this church in Palermo, Sicily, and the Sun cast an intensely bright light through the domed windows in the roof, I got it. Everything from the detailing of the various colours of marble on the floor, to the vast frescos, combined with the sheer volume of the place with its massive pillars, but the shafts of sunlight really did it for me. What a genius design. What an incredible effect. What a moment of awe.

I was in Cefalu, on Sicily, last year, and took several photographs of the beautiful works of art which fill the streets of the little town. These planters are beautiful. And each of them has a plant in it, which somebody must be looking after. People have taken the time to create these wonderful objects, and to place them on the steps of this narrow passageway ascending to the next street. Isn’t that so appealing? Doesn’t it draw you in? This is a street which is just a delight to walk in. And imagine if this is a street you walk up, or down, every day, to buy your bread, to get to the cafe, to visit your friends. How something this simple changes everything. How it make the lived environment more beautiful, more human, more a celebration of creativity and uniqueness. I love this. Here’s another photo from round the corner….

In a hot place like Cefalu, you need to sit in the shade from time to time. But look at these two benches. Simple, elegant, yes, functional, but also beautiful. And look at the planters. Different from the ones on the stairs, but glorious all the same, and with images from history and myth relevant to this particular place. We humans are great at deepening and enriching our daily lives, through art, design, myths and stories.

Thank goodness, we are not all obsessed with “utility” and “efficiency”. Thank goodness we are humans, not machines.

I’m currently reading Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant “Orwell’s Roses”, and, in that book she describes the origin of the phrase “Bread and Roses”. This isn’t a phrase I was familiar with but it seems to have originated with Helen Todd, the early 20th Century campaigner for Womens’ Suffrage in the USA. Helen Todd wrote that women’s votes would ……

go toward helping forward the time when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child….

Rebecca’s chapter on this phrase outlines its history from that time, and how it spread to other countries and languages right up to the present day, including “Pan y Rosas”, a feminist-socialist organisation which originated in Argentina.

I love this phrase and the idea which underpins it. I love how it captures the human needs for, on the one hand material security and nurture, and, on the other hand, for the unquantifiable….beauty, joy, pleasure and learning.

The photo I’m sharing with you today is from a fountain in Zurich. I was there last March. Starting during the pandemic, I believe, people started to fill the fountains with roses in Zurich in the run up to Easter, as a symbol of hope. They’ve carried on that tradition every year since. Here’s another photo I took when I was there.

Yesterday I wrote about the exercise of taking the “view from on high“. Today, I’m returning to another of my favourite themes and activities……the wide open.

Maybe it’s because I was born and brought up in Scotland, or maybe it’s something many of us share, wherever we live, or wherever we come from, but a view like this opens me up to the world. An expanse like this, including a clear view of distant, snow covered mountains, reflected on the surface of a body of water makes me want to take a big deep breath in, slowing empty my lungs, and just take it all in.

This simple action of slow, large in-breath, followed by an even slower, longer out-breath, activates the parasympathetic nervous system, and it’s this response in the body which slows the heart, lowers the blood pressure, and relaxes our muscles.

The wide open natural environment opens the heart and the mind. In one and the same moment, I feel calm, feel my consciousness expand, and my heart open to this one, amazing, beautiful planet. I feel gratitude, contentment, and peace.

As the boundaries between my individual self, and the whole of the planet, of the universe even, dissolve, I experience awe, and know, in my heart and my mind, that I am inextricably connected to what is greater than me.

I am quite a fan of forest bathing, of the influence of trees on our health and wellbeing. I’m also a fan of being in the garden, listening to the birdsong, feeling the warmth of the sun (not in the midst of winter however!), and wandering around to discover what new plants and creatures I can find sharing this little space with me. But the experience of standing in the “wide open” is something else. It has a power. I recommend it.