When I was a child my parents had a beach house in a quiet area outside the city. My sisters and I used to complain about having to spend our holidays and most weekends away from our friends. Though we would occasionally bring friends to stay, it was like we were missing out on growing up in a society with all its enticements – shopping centre hangouts and the like. There was also another part of me that was relieved that I had the space to be in wonder with the world a little longer than many of my peers.
My sisters and I used to sleep in the backyard under the stars in summer. I would wake up halfway through the night and lay there in awe – magnetised to a sky filled with billions of stars. It was so dark, we could see everything – so many stars that to this day I’ve not found a place quite the same. I remember shooting stars every second and feeling like the sky was so close, as if it was moving closer towards me the longer I looked at it – now I understand this to mean that the seemingly close proximity was a reflection of feeling the universe inside me. I’d lay there for hours just staring at the grandness and majesty of it all. It was like my eyes got wider and my heart expanded up and out to meet it all. Pure connection with a divine aspect of me that is still palpable as I write about it. Nonetheless, it was a connection I decided to completely sully on the basis that no one and nothing was meeting me with the same grandness and majesty that the stars did. Continue reading “Returning to Wonderment – A Practical Return”