I still vividly remember the shock and wonder of gazing into the waters of the shallow little river near my home when I was a young kid. There I was, lying on my stomach on the grassy river bank on a warm summer’s day, my head close to the water surface, looking down through the clear water, which was only about a foot deep. The gravel riverbed below glistened and sparkled gold, yellow and brown through the dappled afternoon sunlight as I became aware of a whole unknown world opening up before me.
Snails, spiralled and curving, slowly wandered over the stony terrain of the river bed. Almost transparent tiny beings – daphnia and cyclops (water fleas), miniature crustaceans – traversed the clear water in jerky motion, little legs beating; they looked like satellites adrift in space. Big water boatmen scooted past as they dived, their oar-like legs propelling them at lightning speed through the water column. Luminous green water weeds waved exotically in the gentle current.
While down below, I became aware that the gravel itself seemed to be moving, until I saw that it was caused by many little caddis fly larvae trundling around; peeking out of their cases, spun together to make cylindrical shells of stones, sand and leaves. Carrying their protective homes on their backs like snails, they were slowly wandering around this rich aquatic land. Of course, back then as a kid, I didn’t know the names of these exotic miniature creatures.
It was like gazing into the depths of the cosmos, seeing the clear night sky reveal the swirling Milky Way, vast and mysterious.
This was a seminal moment for me and I will never forget my first introduction to the extraordinary life of a small river bottom – in fact, it could be any small environment, when you look closely. The wonder and awe I experienced then, often forgotten through some of my adult years, has become a key element of my experience as an older adult.
What I’ve learned is that everything is really much more of this nature when we open the doors of perception by simply being more present, undistracted and giving our senses to the richness of everyday experience. Then wonder and awe become regular components of our day, elicited by many different perceptions, whether the beauty of a tree, or a leaf or a sunset, or music, or a smile.
The characteristic nature of these experiences is that in the moment, ‘you’ are not there looking on and enjoying or admiring the scene; in awe and wonder there is no viewer or listener, there is only seeing or listening, and no separation from nature. Such experiences can be an important element in helping to shift our identity from one of separation to one of total connection. Rather than the common feeling that we are somehow observers of life, accompanied by a vague sense of estrangement, this is increasingly replaced by a deep belonging, natural care and love.
(I’ve explored this topic previously here):
It’s often assumed that the innocence of childhood with its wonderment and awe has to give way and be superseded by mature adult experience and knowledge; and that this is all that is needed to deal with the hard realities of adult life in an often transactional world.
Yet the wonder and awe needn’t be lost, and if it is, then it is to our great detriment. For the world is miraculous, and awe and wonder are an element of our experience free of the trammelling filters of the mental rational mind. Poets have forever lamented the loss of innocence.
For our health, sanity and perspective, maintaining access to this deeper relationship with the world around us, is more important than we might imagine. I find I derive great succour in having the wherewithal to face into the terrible dilemmas we face as a human race right now, by a continued connection to this original sense of belonging and expanded identity.
Of course you can use beautiful experiences to escape from hard realities, but I find they give me the impetus to do just the opposite. I feel that it is important to be in touch with how bad things really are in our human global predicament. As such, I am concerned and interested in seeing and facing the horrors of climate collapse, the grief of accelerating extinction of so many precious fellow beings and the terrible suffering of the Global South. It is this visceral deep connection with beauty, wonder, truth and identity with Mother Earth, which gives me the strength and sanity to better hold and bear the whole picture.
William Blake wrote extensively about such perennial dilemmas in his Songs of Innocence and Experience, which very much hold both the light and the dark together.
We all know the famously beautiful and mystical beginning lines of his poem, Auguries of Innocence:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
Yet in spite of this renown, few people seem to know or quote from any of the following lines of this considerably longer poem, where Blake cries out against the terrible iniquities of his times:
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr’ all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood….
(….and much more in a similar vein)
Blake certainly brought together innocence and experience in this way and it very much resonates with me. Horror, paradox and chaos are an inescapable part of life too – but only a part – and we need rooting and anchoring in a deeper reality in order to be able to sanely hold and respond from the whole picture.
