Driving home from the hardware store today, I experienced an intense spark of unexpected connection, cloaking me in a dream-like trance. I’ve come to associate this sensation with the degree of balance within me. When comfortable in mind, at peace, and unconflicted, the instances seem to occur more often. My family aside, it is in these moments that I find my greatest source of happiness.
This magical state draws me into a powerful union of what I can only describe as a fleeting fellowship with a mysterious energy. The transformation makes my chest heave in gratitude, leaving me breathless with compassion, shepherding forth an unconditional, universal love that thaws the fog of enculturation’s mirage. It demonstrates that there is more to life than society’s concocted vision of reality.
It is tempting to dissect these periods of euphoria for higher meaning, but I’ve come to believe this is a dead end. Rationality can never adequately describe this connection through an understanding of learned relations and labels. For me, the only way to catch a partial glimpse of elevated consequence is to consider such experiences obliquely, to deflect the dazzling brilliance to the periphery of consciousness, to the land of imaginative surrender.
As I pull into my driveway, I find reassurance in a single learned truth: relieving the suffering of others helps to put me in balance and find peace. Whether there is a higher significance to life no longer matters. I am content in the knowledge that it is simply beyond my ken, resting in the comfort of goodwill’s grace.