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There is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein that I believe is one of the wisest pointers on how to navigate this strange life journey we find ourselves on together. “There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.” What truly resonates with me is he’s pointing out that it’s a choice we all have to make…and make again and again.
In 2007, virtuoso concert violinist, Joshua Bell, anonymously played in a Washington D.C. metro station during the morning commute. While looking like any typical street musician who plays for tips amongst the rushing human sea, he, of course, sounded sublime. He played Bach and held nothing back, unleashing all the masterful, musical chops that had propelled him to the pinnacle of the classical world.
As you can easily imagine, most folks passed him by without noticing the incredible beauty before them, a type of beauty that can only be coaxed from the spark of deep human genius, a type of beauty that changes the world in its passing.
Why have so many of us agreed to buy into a description of life that doesn’t honor the space for beauty? Why is rushing to a job that probably doesn’t enliven our spirits have such a high priority that we don’t even allow ourselves to notice that a world-class violinist is playing a mere few feet away?
According to Gallup’s World Poll from 2017, only 15% of full-time employees are engaged at their job, meaning a staggering 85% of working humans don’t give a crap about their work, only seeing it as something that we have to do for a paycheck.
All of those people passing Joshua Bell by, as if he were just the commonplace, a mundane part of the architecture, like a stairway, water fountain, or piped in Muzak, were making a choice, whether they realized it or not. In any moment, we are all choosing what we intend our lives to express. And in the metro station that morning, the expressed human intentions had nothing to do with allowing for the experience of beauty or acknowledging the inherent joy of life. This is crap.
The choice to choose beauty, to honor wonder and rapture as a priority in our lives is ours to make. And when we don’t choose to make the highest human expressions a priority, life becomes hollow, and we wind up just moving about, making sure the bills are paid while waiting to die.
When we disregard the importance of beauty, we become afraid, angry, and unable to see the true nature of the miraculous unfolding of life. When we don’t engage that grander human potential in life, we become trapped in minimized descriptions, created by the powers whose intention is grabbing more for themselves.
The description of life many of us have bought into is fueled by the intention of making a profit as its highest expression. Instead of beauty, we are taught to see the world and each other as mere resources to be exploited. Look around at our world, at the results of seeing our world as only a resource and ask yourself how you believe this is working out for all of us.
Our lives unfold from where we place our attention. And that is definitely a choice. And those moments of choice are continually creating our intentions, albeit unconscious ones for many of us. At that moment, rushing to their trains, those sleepwalking citizens of our nation’s capital were choosing an intention that included disregarding one of the highest human expressions of beauty. It just wasn’t worthy of note compared to intently hurrying along on their commute. That incredible music wasn’t important enough for a pause, maybe risking being five or ten minutes late to a job that most undoubtedly only do for the paycheck. This is sad beyond measure.
We are surrounded by beauty like the music of Joshua Bell every day in the form of the living systems of our world. We take so much for granted and have blinded ourselves in the dream of profit and worry about the future bills. The only type of time most of us keep to is company-time.
But there is another type of time that many of us have forgotten to acknowledge and abide in: Earth-time, time engaging our natural relationship with our world and each other. Perhaps Einstein might have called it miracle-time. It’s really the time we were born into before we learned about clocks, time cards, and retirement planning. Within Earth-time we can catch the beauty of a simple city bird bouncing about a branch of the tree we’ve looked at a thousand times, but never truly seen at all. Or we can notice the brilliant intricacy of that “weed” growing behind the house that maybe doesn’t need pulling after all.
Engaging beauty has a way of changing us for the better. Anyone stopping long enough in front of Joshua Bell that morning was transformed. They were made stronger by accepting an invitation to bathe in the energy of the miraculous. Beauty brings balance and a depth of meaning to our lives that we can never get from company-time or the paychecks. Beauty enlarges our perceptions beyond the puny little ego-me. It points us towards that greater intelligence that is the fire of creation. We could always bring a part of our attention to that wonder if we chose to. And how glorious would that be?
I am not suggesting that we all quit our jobs tomorrow so that we can awaken to beauty—though, wouldn’t that be something? But I am suggesting we become aware of our thoughts and feelings about what we wish to put our attention on so that we can become conscious of the choices we make every day. And maybe we can intend to allow our minds to naturally settle down so that we can finally see the miraculous majesty that old tree carries.
How many of us sit down and decide what we wish our lives to express? It’s a worthwhile activity, like creating a personal mission statement. And we can take into account the entire world in this practice. We can act as if all of us deserve to live a miraculous life, together.
“There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.” Maybe it’s time to choose!
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Photo credit: Pixabay