Worry to Wonder

I was about six or seven when I joined AWANA. The goal of AWANA was to memorize Bible verses for patches or badges that would be sewn on a vest, girl-scout style. During an AWANA meeting one Wednesday night at the Baptist church my family attended at the time, I read a verse from Revelation. Before that moment, I had never been told that the Bible says the world is going to end and Jesus is coming back. That verse terrified me. It shook my world. I didn’t feel like I could ask my parents about it because, based on what I had been taught about the Bible, I didn’t think I was supposed to or allowed to be scared about something in it.

I think I was a little older when I first got really scared about eternity. How does that feel like? I had been alive less than ten years, so what was forever supposed to be? In either direction, what does it mean to not end? In fact, what does it mean to not begin? I had seen things start and finish. I could wrap my mind around finity, but not infinity. (Side note, I just googled “opposite of infinity” to find the right work to use there. Another mind-bender.)

A few months after I first started to drive, I remember realizing all of a sudden that all these people in their separate cars were each listening to something different on the radio and going and coming from different places. It hit me how many people have existed and all had different thoughts and perspectives. It also made me think of the conversations I would have with my elementary school best friend about whether we all see colors the same. What if what I have learned to mean red my whole life means red to you too but looks blue in your world? How do I know for sure I’m seeing the exact same color scheme as everyone else? We all experience the world so differently from our vastly unique perspectives. So, really, what is reality, what is perspective, what are we all doing?

I have struggled with, as Michael Gungor puts it, the absurdity of my existence, for most of my life. While my fellow youth-groupers listened in awe to talks about how infinitely big and small the universe is, or how Heaven might be, or when the end times are coming, I would often have to leave the room. Now, I frequently wake up in the middle of the night remembering my consciousness and freaking out at the thought that I was without it for a few hours. Where was I? I wasn’t gone, but I was gone. I still existed, but without awareness of existence, what is existence?

The feeling I get thinking about all these questions is almost like an internal buzzing or restlessness. Since I can’t describe it well, I usually just call it freaking out. I don’t think it’s a full on anxiety attack. It usually passes if I get up, walk around, take a few deep breaths and try to think about something else. I force myself back down to my physicality in the present moment. I exist now. That’s enough for now. If there comes a time in the future when I don’t exist or am permanently unaware of my existence, it won’t be scary because I won’t know it. It’s only scary now, but I exist now.

I haven’t explained this to many people in the past, mostly because I think it sounds silly. I also wonder sometimes if it even makes sense. I have assumed, like most of us do with our secrets, that I was the only one ever feeling this way or thinking these thoughts and freaking out alone.

But I’ve been listening to my new favorite pastime, a podcast called You Made It Weird. Pete Holmes, a comedian, sits down with other comedians as well as philosophers, scientists, musicians, authors, neurologists and so far one football player, and basically just talks about the weirdness of everything. Toward the end of each episode, the host and guest usually discuss bigger, deeper, heavier, “weird-er” issues like relationships, existence, God, the universe, religion, etc. And I have heard famous comedians, actors, scientists, authors and philosophers discuss the same topics I’ve been afraid to think about for most of my life.

Except the main difference is, they don’t sound as scared. I’m sure, in their own dark houses late at night or while driving alone or sometimes while looking up at the stars, their own freak out moments come and they need their own mantras and breathing exercises to calm them down. But on the podcast, there’s something different in their voices. They have a sense of wonder. They even laugh at the absurdity instead of crumble under its weight.

“God is laughing because he gets the cosmic joke. That everything in the universe is a paradox. Nothing makes sense. Why do we exist? Why is there something instead of nothing? What does it all mean? Nothing, actually, in the universe needs to exist. So why does it exist? How does this universe come into this absurdity? How does nothing happen to become everything?” –Deepak Chopra

“This exact interrelated web of people and events and places and memories and desire and love that is your life haven’t ever existed in the history of the universe. Welcome to a truly unique phenomenon. Welcome to the most thrilling thing you will ever do. Welcome to your life.” –Rob Bell

“You live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing.” –Louis CK

“Mystery is not something that is unknowable. Mystery is infinitely knowable.” –Richard Rohr

“There’s nothing in nothingness, and what are we doing here? The big bang banged, and for some reason we’re here. And that’s astonishing. And that we can even understand that is the most astonishing.” –Bill Nye

“The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.” –Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Whatever it is that you find yourself in the midst of on any given day – from laundry to meetings and traffic to going to class and answering emails and driving kids around – I want you to learn to live like you’re not missing a thing,, like your eyes are wide open, fully awake to the miraculous nature of your own experience.” –Rob Bell

And I’ve begun to wonder what kind of difference that would make to look at life with less worry and more wonder. To take today as all I have, because it is, and not worry about the end but enrich and fully embrace the present.

If someone left an anonymous, mysterious gift on my doorstep, I would probably go crazy for a week or so trying to figure out who left it for me so I could adequately thank them (and partly because the not knowing would drive me a little crazy in and of itself). If it were a valuable gift, I might also try to protect it and worry if it ever might be taken from me. But if I were wise, I would do my best to focus on simply using and enjoying the gift well. Someone must have left it for me for a reason, even if I never figure out who or why. Someone must have had my joy, pleasure, good in mind. Someone must have found joy in leaving me this gift, even if they didn’t leave enough evidence for me to adequately thank them or pay them back. So the choice I have as I see it is either to fret over how I got it and if I’ll lose it, or to simply accept it as a precious gift, be thankful and enjoy that it was given and is now mine.