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When I look up in the universe, I know I’m small, but I’m also big. I’m big because I’m connected to the universe and the universe is connected to me.”
Sympatheia
It was around 1879, while John Muir took his first trip to Alaska, that he experienced a rare and unique feeling of cohesion and syncopathy, something that he would remember for the rest of his life, and so should we.
John Muir was a Scottish-American naturalist and writer who was often referred to as the “Father of the National Parks”.
A bit hyperbolic at first, but let’s just say he earned his nickname.
Not only was he deeply passionate about nature and the preservation of wilderness, but he also played a key role in the establishment of several national parks including Yosemite and Sequoia.
So, as far as alluring landscapes go, John’s life had no shortage of them.
But his trip to Alaska definitely set a unprecedented benchmark from which he would see life differently on the future
As he and his team were exploring the fjords and rocky landscapes of the now called Alaska’s Glacier Bay, a powerful feeling struck them all at once.
And in doing so, Muir recorded this feeling in a way unmatched until today:
We feel the life and motion about us, and the universal beauty: the tides marching back and forth with weariless industry, laving the beautiful shores, and swaying the purple dulse of the broad meadows of the sea where the fishes are fed, the wild streams in rows white with waterfalls, ever in bloom and ever in song, spreading their branches over a thousand mountains; the vast forests feeding on the drenching sunbeams, every cell in a whirl of enjoyment; misty flocks of insects stirring all the air, the wild sheep and goats on the grassy ridges above the woods, bears in the berry-tangles, mink and beaver and otter far back on many a river and lake; Indians and adventurers pursuing their lonely ways; birds tending to their young—everywhere, everywhere, beauty and life, and glad, rejoicing action. - John Muir
It was exactly at this moment, that he fealt what the Stoics referred to as sympatheia.
A connectedness with the cosmos.
The avoidance of our purpose
A monk is a man who is separated from all and who is in harmony with all.
It’s in this moments, like the one experienced by John Muir, that we realize that our importance may be slightly inflated.
This is what Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud called the “oceanic feeling”.
“A sense of boundless, limitless connection with the universe or a sense of being one with the entirety of existence.“
This is what we should be actively searching for. This sense of cosmic sympathy that draws us near the important questions in life.
Who we are? What is our purpose…
Unfortunately, the daily enui and the constant desire of material success only pushes us further away.
We’re always too busy, too stressed, to worried to care about such inconsequential things, arent we?
But we fail to realize that a disconnection to a bigger purpose, is not only us losing a part of our soul, a reason we are here, but we’re also detaching ourselves from the traditions we hail from.
Then again, it’s EGO who stands in the way of us and the person we could become.
It blinds us from what’s truly important and makes us believe that the center of attention is the only thing that matters.
That material success is the one and only goal.
And it’s only logical isn’t it?
Asking ourselves this deeper questions isn’t easy, and many times scary.
That’s why we try so hard as to keep ourselves busy so that we avoid diggin deeper, to avoid truly knowing ourselves.
That’s why Roman Poet Ovid knew that leisure is humanity’s ultimate doom.
In modern society we’ve doomed leisure as the biggest evil there is. Probably because we live in a overly-productive world in which action is regarded as success, thus the lack of action can only be failure.
Butit is when we have nothing else to do, that we face the true terrors of our existence. The questions we try so hard to avoid because we don’t know yet the answer.
In our leisure we reveal what kind of people we are.
And so, keeping ourselves busy is actually the easy part, the tough one is facing boredom, facing ourselves.
Because ego hates questions…
Go into the wilderness
Creativity is a matter of receptiveness and recognition. This cannot happen if you’re convinced the world revolves around you.
Here’s an exercise for you:
Go into the wilderness, or any place of historical significance, and look around for at least 10 minutes.
Can you see how little the world has changed? How many men and women have gone through history only to leave behind a glimpse of their existence?
It’s in those moments that we sense of the immensity of the world.
Ryan Holiday says:
It’s hard to be anything but humble walking along a beach late at night with an endless black ocean crashing loudly against the ground next to you.
Yes, we are indeed small and seemingly insignificant, but we are still part of this universe.
It’s what American Political Scientist and writer Brian Klaas calls the beauty of enthropy.
We control nothing but we influence everything.
And if it seems oxymoronic, perhaps it is.
American Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson described this duality more clearly:
When I look up in the universe, I know I’m small, but I’m also big. I’m big because I’m connected to the universe and the universe is connected to me.”
This is why history’s greatest leaders and thinkers have gone through a “sojurn” in the wilderness in which they come back with inspiration and a clear plan.
The reason being that, in doing so, they found perspective, something we lack on a daily basis.
So we should actively seek this perspective and understading of our role in this world, meditating on the immensity of the universe and what it means.
Because it is only when we see it, that we can disconnect from our ego and see past our ambition.
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.