Wonder

 "The other world is this world rightly seen." - Nisargadatta Maharaj

Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night semi-conscious—not enough to glue together very tangible thoughts, but there's this kind of hyper awareness of my own existence. I lie still, eyes closed, completely in awe of the fact that I'm alive, that somehow, after what seems like an eternity of darkness, emptiness, my being emerged to travel with the earth and sun and their trillions of neighbors. 

It's as if I'm being born for the first time.

And it's too surreal to capture without some sort of magnificent poetry or prose or burst of creative delight, perhaps even those not enough to do it justice.

There's a video that went viral a few years back—a 29-year-old woman has a device installed in her ear, allowing her to hear for the very first time. 

Her reaction?

Tears. 

The nurse's voice is enough to make her buckle. Smiling uncontrollably, she is overwhelmed by the beauty of sound.

Most of us are endowed with the ability to hear, but when our alarms ring in the morning, we're more likely crying for different reasons.

Do you remember how immaculate the world was when you were a child? Every sight cinematic, every smell ripely pungent, every favorite food unparalleled ecstasy. Slipping down a plastic slide, swinging forth and back on wood, hiding and seeking—these pleasures were joyous in ways we hardly recall.

And we get it—over time, we grow used to our surroundings, used to the patterns of being alive, and the brilliance we harnessed with fireflies in jars slips freely back into sky.

Worse yet, we become prone to pessimism, expecting things to go wrong. But whether our lives are ordinarily mundane or a constant struggle, we tend to miss what's all around us—the immaculate, indescribable beauty of the cosmos.

Sure, we look at the stars on a clear night and manage to scratch our heads once in a while, but apathy turns our eyes elsewhere and we're back in our homes with our cell phones and screens.

We shouldn't feel guilty about that. But we should be aware of it. Perhaps the awareness alone is enough to catch a glimpse of what we felt as toddlers, if only for a moment. Maybe we'll sip our coffee more slowly and allow its aroma to fill our souls. Maybe we'll look at the sky when we're stuck in traffic and revel at the beauty of its vastness. Maybe we'll even be overwhelmed at our bodies' capacity to breathe, our hearts' persistence to beat, our brains' ability to cognize and think.

After all, the other world is this world, rightly seen.

Photo: @cosmuniversecol