Return to Awe

A little sneak preview from The Lamp Lighter: Living in the Light — Volume Two.

Children are wonderful teachers of awe.

Watch a child encounter something new and you can often see the discovery in the whole face. The eyes widen. The body leans forward. Questions arrive. A bug, a puddle, a strange rock, a train, snow, a bird doing something ridiculous, the world has not yet been filed under Seen It.

Adults accumulate files.

My sister Janice and I sometimes deliberately interrupt that process. We stop and say:

“Let’s pretend we never have been here before.”

It sounds silly.

It works.

For a moment, we look again.

Not because the mountain changed. Not because the sunset became more beautiful. Not because the person beside us suddenly became someone else.

We changed the frame through which we were looking.

We cannot live in permanent astonishment. Nor should we try.

The practice is not to stay in awe.

It is to return to awe.

And returning to awe isn't only about mountains, sunsets, or beautiful places.

Sometimes it means looking again at the life we already have.

The person who has been dependable for so long that we barely notice what they quietly contribute.

The freedom we once dreamed about that has somehow become an ordinary Tuesday.

The home that once felt like a gift but has slowly become simply where we live.

The small rituals, friendships, abilities, opportunities, and people that have been present long enough to become familiar.

But looking again can reveal something else, too.

We can become accustomed to stress, noise, distance, unhappiness, or ways of being treated that once would have caught our attention.

So returning to awe isn't pretending everything is wonderful.

It is seeing again.

Maybe the question isn't only:

What am I missing?

Maybe it is:

When did I stop noticing this?

Sometimes the extraordinary hasn't disappeared.

Sometimes it has simply been there long enough to become ordinary.

Return to awe.