Moments of Epic Wonderment

I have a very good friend who is a work colleague stationed in Bishkek with whom I usually communicate with via Email once or twice a day on business.  Sometimes, I conclude my communications with a whimsical or peculiar closing salutation.  Today, in my salutation, I wrote that I hoped her day had "moments of epic wonderment" as my day seemed to contain nothing of the sort.

She wrote back and told me that she had experienced a moment of epic wonderment today.  And then I realized I had too.  Epic wonderment. It's a "state of awed admiration or respect."  It can also be defined as the "surprise and admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, or inexplicable."  After considering these definitions, it's not astonishing that many of us go for days or weeks without perceiving that we ever experience a moment of epic wonderment. It seems as though lately our surprise and amazement has been caused by unexpected or inexplicable events of shocking ugliness, rather than those of profound beauty. Yet they are here to be grasped, these positive moments of wonderment, if we can somehow find them.

My moment of epic wonderment today was the feeling of surprise and awe I experienced when I considered an unexpected friendship that has enriched my life more than I might have imagined months ago.  I also feel wonderment, when I look out my office window at the stark and beautiful landscape and consider the unexpected nature of life that caused me to somehow end up living in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Almost every moment in our lives contains the possibility for wonderment when we realize that a state of awed admiration and respect should not solely be reserved for the remarkable or the unusual, but also for those things which are embedded in our daily lives that are often overlooked and ignored. Whether it is the spectacle of the night sky, or the warm and gentle touch of someone's hand, uncountable sources of wonderment like these surround us, despite our obliviousness to them in our hurried and unreflective lives.

Each day I witness much that fills me with concern. The state of the world is alarming. Aspects of my existence are sometimes troubling and I fail to grasp the intricacies of the challenges those around me face in their own lives. Then I must stop. It is at that instant, when I need to search outside myself for the surprisingly beautiful and unexpected. It is in these moments of epic wonderment where meaning and insight most intensely reside and where some small strength to continue onward can be obtained.

A source of wonderment: the view outside my office window