“If we are not sometimes baffled and amazed and undone by the world around us, rendered speechless and stunned, perhaps we are not paying close enough attention.” –Ben Marcus

Perhaps we are sleepwalking through life, trudging obliviously through the pattern we’ve grooved and smoothed to protect ourselves from the unevenness, from the surprises of reality.

Moments of genuine, bracing presence shine in my memory for their rarity.

You can’t live in perpetual amazement. (Some do, I suppose. Mystics or saints or those we deem crazy and avoid on the sidewalk.)

But even occasional doses of bafflement—with the infinite sky, with the joy or anguish of an open heart, with the sheer oddity of being alive and aware—would be a potent enough tonic for our numbness.

Pay attention. Come undone. Be amazed.

 This is a fitting day to reflect on a couple of profound thoughts from Dr. King.

The first is on Apple’s home page today: 

And this one offers credible hope when the future appears dismal: 

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

No matter how bleak or infuriating human progress may look in the moment, we have come a long way. 

And in the long run, we will go even further. 

We will get there faster, though, if more people more regularly pondered the question in the first quote above. 

This was the closing challenge I offered in my speech to college students last week. It’s distilled from this Bertrand Russell quotation:

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” –Bertrand Russell

The “Be awesome” part is redundant, I know.

If you’re spreading love and pursuing truth, you can’t help but be awesome.

 

“We rise by lifting others.” –Robert Ingersoll

Excellent!

“…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…” –Jack Kerouac

Who can be like this? 

I know I’ve got this touch of glorious madness in me. You do, too. 

But I do yawn and say commonplace things not infrequently. 

Sometimes, though, as if a switch gets flipped, I come alive and burn a little brighter. 

We need to switch to madness mode more often and override the default yawn state most of us have grooved into our daily lives. 

Your public display of madness just might infect and transform, even if just momentarily, a yawner or two. 

Shine, friends. 

The big picture provides perspective.

Regularly seeing yourself in the context of the universe—just how small and insignificant you really are—will nudge you back off the ledge.

You are unique. There has never been and will never be another you. Be the best expression of you you can be.

But you are just an infinitesimally small part of the universe. It doesn’t spin around you. It’s mostly indifferent to you. It will go on just fine with or without you.

And maybe that should hurt my ego, but instead it frees me to not take myself too seriously.

Thinking this way can free us to just enjoy the ride and relish our good fortune to have made it onto the stage in our bit part in this grand cosmic extravaganza.

  

Profound, but so straightforward and simple. 

When you feel inclined to judge, try instead to understand. 

  

I’m with Lawrence on this. There’s even research showing that we are most consistently happy when we are lost in a moment, when our minds don’t wander and flit from one distraction to another.

What triggers a flow state for you? Can you make that happen more often? 

More happiness is there to be tapped, and it’s those flow states where you’re most likely to produce remarkable work, meaningful art, and deep connection with others. 

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” –Joseph Campbell

Excellent. 

The power of low expectations and the joy of “small mercies”:

“I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

via BrainPickings

If I’m expecting the universe to grant me a great parking space or extravagant prosperity or fairy tale love, I better get used to disappointment. 

The universe is busy spinning galaxies into infinity and keeping my atoms together so I can go on being me for a little while longer.

But wonders abound, and I just need to see and be grateful for the small joys I continually stumble across every day. 

I’m thankful for a car to park anywhere, my average middle-class comfortable prosperity, and my sweet, everyday-joy kind of love.

Small mercies and authentic wonders can fill a day — and a life’s worth of days — with the best the universe has to offer.

  

“Don’t think about why you question, simply don’t stop questioning. Don’t worry about what you can’t answer, and don’t try to explain what you can’t know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren’t you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind—to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity.” –Albert Einstein