What Moves You? What Elevates You?
Written by Lisa Carbutt
Are you struggling to find a story within you that speaks to transcendence?
Is it because you don’t believe you have experienced it, you’re worried no one will relate to your story, or you’re not sure you grasp its meaning?
Merriam-Webster defines “transcendence” as the quality or state of being transcendent; “transcendent” is defined as being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge.
Transcendent experiences are all around us, though we’re often too preoccupied or tired to recognize them. Whether we realize it or not, we crave transcendence. When it happens, we understand something extraordinary has happened—we’ve learned something profound or discovered something beyond our senses that seeps into our body and takes hold of our hearts.
Can you recall the rush you felt as the adrenaline pumped through your veins when you slid your surfboard into the barrel of a wave for the first time? How about the wildly unforgettable fettuccini alfredo dish you ate in Rome, the one that brought you nearly to tears because you knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience? And don’t forget the idyllic motorcycle ride with your buddies twenty-five years ago along Independence Pass, where you were convinced that you became the wind.
Still, stumped? Consider looking to literature, poetry, or music/song lyrics for inspiration. Do you have a favorite author, poet, or musical group that moves you and raises you to a place of interconnectedness? Does the following quote remind you of a transcendent experience with the night sky?
“There are landscapes in which we feel above us not sky but space. Something larger, deeper than sky is sensed, is seen, although in such settings the sky itself is invariably immense. There is a place between the cerebrum and the stars where sky stops and space commences, and should we find ourselves on a particular prairie or mountaintop at a particular hour, our relationship with sky thins and loosens while our connection to space becomes solid as bone.”
If stargazing isn’t your thing, consider looking to your favorite song for inspiration. You may find a transcendent sentiment hiding among the lyrics, the words forever imprinted onto your soul. One of my favorites is Dave Grohl’s lyrics from the song “Everlong” by the Foo Fighters:
Breathe out
So I can breathe you in.
– “Everlong,” The Colour and the Shape, producer: Gil Norton; Capitol Records, May 20, 1997
Doesn’t everyone need to feel this kind of connection to another human being? The following lines depict our need to hold onto feelings of euphoria:
If everything could ever be this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
– “Everlong,” The Colour and the Shape, producer: Gil Norton; Capitol Records, May 20, 1997
When lyrics move you to a different level, you might write a story about the first time you heard that song.
Or how about poetry? Nothing speaks from the soul or explores the human psyche quite like a poem borne of nature’s perfection. Ever since I read how Ponyboy recited “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost to Johnny in The Outsiders by S.E Hinton, the words have reminded me of the fleeting innocence of youth and the transient beauty of things that cannot last:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-”Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Robert Frost, Yale Review, 1923
Sigh…I love those words so much that I memorized them when I was fifteen years old.
Watch for what moves you and what elevates you. Then step out of your comfort zone and put your thoughts to paper.
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.”