Albert Einstein once said, “He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
Many of us are struggling to survive the chaos. We live day to day, unsure of what to expect at any moment, and ready for the other shoe to drop. Trust seems like an ever-fleeting concept, and divisiveness lurks everywhere we look. People are more ready than ever to argue, debase, fight, and threaten.
In times like this it can feel as is all we can do is fight to survive. And yet, we are not living. We are simply trying to avoid death. Awe seems like an afterthought.
But it might also be the thing we need the most. Awe is defined as “overwhelming wonder”. It is not something that we look for, rather, it takes us by surprise. But we must first be open. We must be willing to see something past ourselves. We must allow ourselves to be not afraid of things we do not understand, but instead but rather to stand in wonder about them.
In awe we transcend our reality because we enter one that is beyond us. For a brief moment, we realize how small we are and how relative our woes are. Awe is perspective on overdrive. When we realize that what we contend with, what we struggle with is only one small part of what we can experience and that there are forces above and beyond us that are much more powerful than we are, we can let go.
We can never have control of everything no matter how hard we try and parsing the line between what we can and can’t control allows us to focus only on what is within our power. When we let go, we are free to direct our energy toward only what we can control. In letting go we become much more powerful because our energy is no longer spread unevenly. It is directed intently. It is aimed, focused and strengthened.