Photo Credit: Silviarita/Pixabay
“When I was a child, the world filled me with joy,” Nick explained. He spoke of spending long hours exploring and playing in the woods, fields and pond adjacent to his boyhood home, of how he found fascination with everything in his midst. Like all children, he possessed “beginner’s eyes,” the kind that perceive the world with fascination and curiosity.
“It was my spiritual bedrock,” he told me. “It bonded me with life and with myself.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Now, I look at the world with jaundiced eyes. I’ve become an angry cynic. I don’t like who I am now, but it feels permanent,” he confessed.
His remarks reminded me of a lyric from the Indigo Girls: “We’re sculpted from youth; the chipping away makes me weary.” The kind of chipping away Nick experienced was not uncommon. He endured his share of losses, setbacks, tragic deaths and illnesses. These unwelcome events didn’t defeat him, as he proved a resilient fellow who, like many, soldiers on. However, gradually but relentlessly, these dour happenings took away his beginner’s eyes.
“I have a dim view of humanity. Sure, there are some great people, and I’m lucky to have a few in my life, but, as a whole, humans suck,” he told me.
Nick recited the usual litany of our collective sins. Environmental destruction, genocide, sexism, mass shootings, animal cruelty, greed, hatred, child abuse—and he was just getting warmed up. He reminded me of what Stephen Hawking said when asked about the possibility of Earth being visited by an advanced alien civilization: “Let’s hope they’re not like us.”
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“I could handle the whole mess except for one thing,” he said, tearing up. “I can’t see the beauty anymore.”
Loss of Awe and Wonder
Traditional mental health thinking would classify Nick as “depressed,” but that’s simplistic. Depression is one of those diagnostic labels that provides a garbage can for much of what ails our minds and spirits. His weariness arose from a loss of wonder and awe, an incapacity to be lifted up by the goodness in our world, particularly the natural realm. The very foundation of his spiritual life felt absent, bleached of color and curiosity by the relentless erosion of time and events.
When we lose something vital in our spirit, something that transcends the mental and emotional, an existential crisis stares us in the face. It’s one thing, and not a good one, to lose a sense of meaning and purpose in one’s life. But it’s another altogether to lose connection with one’s soul. For folks like Nick, this is not a religious concept, but a spiritual one. Once so afflicted, one becomes profoundly lost.
“You need to be found,” I told him. “What you have lost can find you, but that requires going back.”
Sometimes, when we lose this essence, we benefit by ignoring the conventional wisdom of “never look back.” Granted, it’s not possible for someone like Nick to re-inhabit his mindset when a young child. However, we can become childlike again.
Because of his deep affinity for nature, I advised Nick to go wander and, in particular, sit in wild places, and to do so often and with mindfulness. In fact, he began and concluded each foray into nature with a breathing meditation, a way of anchoring his awareness in the present. While on these excursions, his mantra became, “Lose your mind and come to your senses,” a bit of wisdom attributed to eccentric psychoanalyst Fritz Perls.
Before long, nature began finding him once again. It drew his consciousness into the awe and wonder inherent in the natural world. By virtue of the timeless chirping of crickets, of the morphing clouds coasting overhead, the jeweled stones bespeckling a sandy beach and so much more, Nick became found. The curiosity and delight from his youth slowly but palpably permeated his consciousness.
His soul reawakened to his version of amazing grace.
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