Gratitude Blog Day 6: One More Time, With Reverence (a reflection on awe and the function of art)

Reverence.
The universe itself is a miraculous and collaborative work of art, an unceasing dance of life that is taking place right outside our blinders, inviting us to partake in the choreography.
Its something that is born into every child, but so easily lost with the tides of time. As we grow older, the inevitable disappointments and sufferings of human experience knock on our door wearing jaded boots; complacency broadcasts the seeming monotony of our world, and our routine relationship with it. We get so caught up in the transaction of making a living and survivalism that we forget the universe itself is a miraculous and collaborative work of art, an unceasing dance of life that is taking place right outside our blinders, inviting us to partake in the choreography.
Disillusionment.
Disillusionment has invited me to her somber dwelling again and again. She has stabbed knives into the delicate dreams I carry on my back, dug bottomless potholes into my road of recovery, stolen my shoes and laid shards of glass out on the sidewalk, filled my heart with copper-laced absinthe and laughed while I went mad.
I have been told I am the type of person who comes across as having a naturally enthusiastic sense of wonder and appreciation for the world. Strangers have told me I seem a bit Pollyanna-ish. People who I am acquainted with have told me I put off a contagious lightness. But people who know me well know that my relationship with reverence has come with a hard fight. Like anyone, I’ve had my fair share of disappointments and suffering. Disillusionment has invited me to her somber dwelling again and again. She has stabbed knives into the delicate dreams I carry on my back, dug bottomless potholes into my road of recovery, stolen my shoes and laid shards of glass out on the sidewalk, filled my heart with copper-laced absinthe and laughed while I went mad. Depression is an old toxic lover of mine, the kind that clings hard and fast, pins your arms down and won’t let go; the kind that keeps you in a choke hold even when you’re crying for the mercy of a single breath, telling you that you will be better off unconscious. Darkness is no stranger of mine.
But I would be remiss to say that there is no place for gratitude here. It is precisely the abrasive darkness that has dwelled in my blood, my bones, my marrow, which catapults me each day into fighting even more stubbornly for the delicate beauty of the world. Each day I open my eyes with the intention of seeking out life’s tiny miracles; simply because I must, to survive.
Art.
Art draws into focus the fine details that we have missed in the broad and hurried strokes of our busy lives, and in the shadow of our misfortunes — reminding us for at least a moment that perhaps we are, and always have been, surrounded by an endless flux of tiny miracles.
Whatever evidence for beauty I find, I absorb its essence, through meditation, through prayer; whereby it pours out of my heart and into my art, my music, my writing. I don’t care if my art is “good” or “bad”, that is not the point. The point is I must get whatever is inside me out; I must preserve the evidence of beauty I have found so I can remember it during the times in which darkness has cast so much of a shadow over me that I can’t see beyond it; and then I must share whatever art form manifests — just in case, somewhere out there, someone else is also standing on a precipice, needing a miracle that will remind them the worth of living one more day.
This is why we need art. The function of art is to reclaim our relationship of wonder with the world; to wake up and see through fresh eyes, to see the subtle day to day beauty surrounding us that we have taken for granted. When we have become blind in our hearts and minds to the things that once excited and inspired us, when we have forgotten the sacredness of the strange, brutal, and fantastic world we call our home; art draws into focus the fine details that we have missed in the broad and hurried strokes of our busy lives, and in the shadow of our misfortunes — reminding us for at least a moment that perhaps we are, and always have been, surrounded by an endless flux of tiny miracles. These miracles are the tiny dancers who beckon us again and again back into the ballet of the universe — inviting us to pull off the blinders, tune out complacency, and tell jadedness to, forgive me, fuck off — who reinvigorate us to put down our cups of darkness, just for today, and step back out into the living world once again with reverence.
