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
In the summer of 2000 I hit my head.
Actually, I hit my head several times. I was waterskiing, trying to learn a wakeboard trick called a Tantrum (just the name tells you there’s going to be trouble . . .). It’s a trick in which you jump the boat’s wake and—still holding on to the rope—do a backflip, landing on the other side of the wake.
I was very focused on landing that trick that summer, and on this one particular Thursday in August I attempted ten or fifteen in a row. I wasn’t getting it, and I repeatedly fell, the back of my head smacking the water each time.
Eventually I got in the boat to take a break, and that’s when things got weird. Apparently, I wasn’t making any sense, because my friend Kent asked me what day of the week it was. The last thing I remember is looking at him and saying, I have no idea what day it is . . .
Later I was told that Kent and MikeTheBoatDriver took me back to the dock, led me to the passenger seat of my car, and then drove me to the hospital. Kristen met us there, where we learned that I had a closed head injury, also known as a concussion. (Who gets a concussion from hitting their head on water?). I should say they learned, because I was out of it. I don’t remember going back to the dock or driving to the hospital or talking to the doctor or any of it.
The first thing I do remember is being driven home, turning the corner onto our street and somehow going from being out of it to being in it—in it like never before.
Here’s what I mean by being in it like never before: Let’s say you’re talking with your neighbor and as you’re chatting about last week’s heat wave you hear a dog bark a few houses over and you wonder whether that’s the same dog you pass by on your morning run and just then your phone rings in your pocket while you notice a scratch on the bumper of your car that you hadn’t noticed until now while you’re responding to whatever your neighbor just said about the dust that’s been building up on her windows while you note that the temperature is dropping because the sun is about to set and you remember that you still need to wash the carrots that you put in the sink before you went outside to get the mail and saw your neighbor . . .
Dogs,
bumpers,
windows,
carrots.
Sound familiar? You’re standing there, physically present with your neighbor, but your mind is ping-ponging from one thought to another, noticing sounds and colors, processing random events from earlier in the day, connecting whatever your neighbor just said about the dust on her windows to the dust on your windows which reminds you that you need to take out the recycling when that thought is interrupted by remembering how you still haven’t responded to that text about plans for Friday night—
You’re there, but you’re also not there.
You’re in that place, at that time, standing there in the street, and yet—in a way that is hard to describe but very real—somewhere in your being you’re also not there.
But in that moment coming home from the hospital when we turned the corner onto our street, I was there, in the front seat of the car, and nowhere else. Whatever it was that the concussion did to my brain, I wasn’t able to think about anything that wasn’t directly in front of me. The color of our house, the grass in the yard, the furniture as I walked in the back door—I noticed all of it, like everything was in slow motion and every detail was on fire.
It was familiar—I knew at some level that I’d been in this place before—but it was also unfamiliar, like I was seeing it all for the first time.
Imagine getting a tour of your life, as if you were observing your life from outside of your life. It had all the comfort and security of something I knew, but the electricity and thrill of something I hadn’t encountered before.
And then our boys came into the room. I looked at Kristen and said, These are our kids? She told me their names as I stared at them. They were the most captivating, exotic creatures in the universe to me. I couldn’t stop tearing up. I kept looking around, repeating, This is our life?
I asked Kristen about my job and where we went to school and how long we’d been married as if I didn’t know the answers, even though the answers she gave resonated with what I already knew at some sort of cellular level, as if they were stored not in my mind but somewhere else in my being. She told me how we met and where we had lived in Los Angeles and I listened like it was the most interesting story I’d ever heard. Because it was.
I was on the edge of my seat hearing about my life, the life I had been living in the first place.
My friend Tomaas told me years later that he stopped by on that first day I was home and when he walked in the front door I was sitting in a chair, staring at my hand. He said that I watched it for a while and then turned to him and said, Isn’t it amazing?
You know how shafts of sunlight stream through the window and you can see specks of dust floating in the air? (And your first thought is I should vacuum more.) I would focus on a single speck and follow it as it drifted leisurely down toward the floor, as if it were the only thing on my mind. Because it was. Literally. Ten or twenty minutes at a time with no other thought running through my mind but that one. particle. of. dust.
Kristen made me a burrito and when I took the first bite, I had to put my fork down because of how startling it was. I could taste all of the spices one at a time, and yet also at the same time. Each one, and the whole, together, simultaneously and separately.
Now I know what you’re thinking at this point—you’re thinking, Yes, Rob, this is why some people do drugs.
Well said. And true. But there’s more to it.
My brain was busy remembering, reorienting itself and plugging back in all those wires that got yanked out when I hit my head. (I’m sure there’s a neurologist somewhere who just read that last sentence and shook her head and thought, It’s way more complicated than that . . .). And because my mind was so occupied on the task at hand, it didn’t have energy for the many other tasks that it normally performs.
Like thinking about the past. Regret, anxiety, ruminating on things I wished I’d done differently—I didn’t have any of that because all that was back there, in the past, and I was only capable of being right here, in the present.
Or thinking about the future. All that worry and stress that we carry around, thinking about what might happen and how things might unfold and what might go wrong was up there, ahead in time. And that was simply absent from my mind.
I could only be present. And the present was enough. It wasn’t just enough, it was more than enough. It was overwhelming. The burrito wasn’t just food, it was an explosion of sensation. The boys weren’t just our kids, they were luminous and ineffably wondrous miracles of flesh and bone. Everything wasn’t just our house and family and friends and life, it was a massive, majestic, complex, electrified gift that floored me with its radiance and vitality, filling me with overflowing gratitude. It was profoundly satisfying and more than I could bear, all of it charged and energized in all its Technicolor splendor.
I’m grasping at language here, trying to describe how transcendent and awe-inspiring it was to see things as they are in their fullness without distractions or guilt or chattering inner dialogue or comparing myself to others or wondering whether there’s a better life somewhere else or wandering thoughts or any urgency to get to the next thing on the list or the next event on the calendar or the next email that needs a response.
There was no rushing, no racing, no frantic dash to grab car keys or get somewhere on time. Time itself warped and slowed around me, creating a serene stillness.
All I had was now, and now was enough. It wasn’t just enough, it was more than enough.
Presence
My life at the time was packed. Busy. Stressed. I was racing from one thing to another. We had a young family, the lawn needed to be mowed and the bills paid and diapers changed. We had just started a church. I was giving sermons and going to meetings and visiting people in hospitals and doing funerals and hiring staff and writing letters and discussing budgets. Around that time I did three weddings on one Saturday. That kind of packed. Every moment was scheduled. I would drive home from work and make calls that I hadn’t had time to make during the day at the office and I’d still be talking when I got home so I’d sit in the garage still in the car trying to finish the conversation while my two-year-old son stood in the doorway wondering why I wasn’t coming inside.
And then I hit my head.
And I couldn’t work or accomplish anything. I’d sit there day after day, staring at my hand or a speck of dust, raving to whoever would listen about how magical and electric and sacred and amazing it all is.
If you had stopped by the house during that week I was recovering, you would have heard me ramble for five minutes and thought, He is so out of it.
But I was also so in it—in the moment, in the present, in my life—more than I’d ever been before.
I hadn’t just tasted a burrito more fully, I had tasted life more fully.
And it changed me. Over the next week my memory gradually came back as the effects of the concussion wore off, but something had shifted within me.
I learned that my life—
my average, ordinary, routine, everyday life—
has infinite depth and dimension and meaning and significance.
I learned that the present moment, with all its pressure and heartbreak and work and struggle and tension and questions and concerns, is way more interesting and compelling and mysterious and even enjoyable than I had ever imagined.
You and I were raised in a modern world that taught us how to work hard and be productive and show up on time and give it our best. We learned at an early age that our grades in high school mattered because that was what colleges look at, and our work in college mattered because that’s how we were going to get good jobs, and how hard we worked at those first jobs determined how fast we would climb the ladder and get ahead in our careers.
And so, for many of us, that’s what we did. We put in the hours and saved our money and stayed late at the office because that’s what one did to be successful.
But all that left us missing something. We were stressed. Distracted. Busy. Feeling like life was passing us by. We had a full schedule, but not a full heart.
We learned lots of very valuable skills, but we weren’t taught how to be here, how to be fully present in this moment, how to not be distracted or stressed or worried or anxious, but just be here, and nowhere else—wide awake to the infinite depth and dimension of this exact moment.
That’s what happened to me when I hit my head—I experienced something else, something so good and true and rewarding and satisfying, but I didn’t know how to stay there. I realized that there were skills and knowledge and practices and muscles that I simply didn’t have.
And so I set out to learn how to be here. I wanted to be present all the time, even when I was working and making plans and facing challenges and moving forward. I wanted to be here even when I went there.
There’s a fascinating commentary in the ancient tradition about the story of Moses and the burning bush. The rabbis say that the bush didn’t suddenly start burning when Moses came upon it; it had been burning the whole time. Moses was simply moving slowly enough and paying attention enough to actually notice it.
Are you moving so fast, are you so stressed and distracted, your head down reading your latest text messages and emails, that you’re passing burning bushes all day long?
Whatever it is that you find yourself in the midst of on any given day—from laundry and 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 existence.
Seeing the Ocean
While I was writing this book I had lunch with my friend Cory, who, as soon as we sat down, told me a story. He reminded me that two years earlier he and I had been driving along the coast in my car and I kept pointing to the sea and laughing and saying, That’s the Pacific Ocean! Can you see it? That’s the Pacific Ocean! Can you see it?
I thought this was funny because when most of what you can see is the ocean, pointing it out is, well, funny.
He told me that at the time he was busy, stressed, working all the time, lying in bed at night obsessing about his job, and that when I pointed to the ocean and laughed and asked whether he could see it, he couldn’t see it.
He then leaned across the table and said, Rob, do you get it? I was so lost in my head and distracted and stressed that I couldn’t see it!
Cory then told me that the experience deeply upset him because he felt like there was something he was supposed to see but he didn’t. So he started making changes in his life, slowing down, obsessing less, enjoying more. And then he told me:
I came here today to tell you that I can see the ocean now.
Picture your life.
Let’s start with the people you’re closest to—
family
friends
spouse
partner
lover
kids
stepkids
siblings . . .
Now let’s broaden the circle to include
neighbors
co-workers
acquaintances.
Now let’s include the physical settings you inhabit,
from where you live
to where you play,
where you work,
where you go to get away from it all,
where you went for the best vacation ever,
where you exercise,
walk,
explore,
eat.
Now picture that person you love.
That’s _____________.
Do you see her?
Do you see him?
Do you see the ocean right in front of you?
Stand back and see that person you love from a slight distance.
Like you never have before.
Like you’re meeting him for the first time.
Like you’re getting a tour of your life and this is your first encounter with her.
Like I just pointed him out and said to you, This is _________.
You begin asking me questions about her. You want details, dates. I tell you how you met him. I show you some pictures. It’s coming back to you. This is new but it’s familiar.
Now think of some of the other people you love. Picture people you work with. Imagine your neighbors.
What if you just learned that one of them has a life-threatening illness? What if you just learned you have a life-threatening illness and your neighbor came over to tell you how much you mean to her? What if your neighbor got done telling you that and then you told him how much he means to you?
What if you had no list of things to do, you had no regret and no worry and all you had is this moment and this second and this tour of your life?
No one has ever done this before.
No one has ever been you before.
This exact interrelated web of people and events and places and memories and desire and love that is your life hasn’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.
Welcome to here.
I want you to be here. I want you to see and feel and notice and even enjoy your life, not just as you sit quietly, but as you go, as you work, as you answer email, as you are stuck in traffic, as you find your path and throw yourself into it, surrendering the outcomes as you risk and learn and grow and work your craft, in the push and pull and stress and pain and sorrow and responsibility and slog of this sacred gift that is your life.
And if that could happen without you having to hit your head, how great would that be?