◊ Listening to the Excitement (continued)

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
~ Abraham Heschel

In addition to our inborn inclination for delight, excitement signals the felt sparkle of existence itself. Listening to the excitement means paying attention to that innate aliveness that vivifies everything and that is skillfully strung into our own being like catgut waiting to be plucked. Designed and placed there carefully, it exists for a good and holy purpose. Nothing makes the instrument maker sadder than for the string to go unstruck, for the string to be pulled, looped, and tightened just right but never to be played.

To use another image, listening to the excitement means to call out or to unleash the energy of that which was thumbed into the ground of our being like a tiny seed. This nascent pip holds not only the potential for enjoyment but also the capacity for passionate and personal concern and the imperative impulse to act. There is little in life more tragic than someone who is deaf to delight, unbowed and blind to the wondrous except perhaps someone who is unaffected by the anguish of another, unbent and impervious to the avoidable suffering of others be it a child who is forced into prostitution, an elderly parent who is neglected, a river that is polluted, or a mountain that is leveled. Those who consciously move toward their truest self are those who discover the intimate relationship between radical amazement and deep sympathy, wonder and compassionate action. Again, the litany offered in the recent reflections focused on the simple and extraordinary impetuses to delight. But we need to be aware that listening to what excites us means paying attention to and being moved not only by what delights us but also by what disturbs us, not only the gleeful memory of snow falling, but also the heartbreaking news that two people died in the storm.

As the complement to listening to boredom, listening to excitement from the heart invites us to see the difference between a surface feeling and the authentic experience of being moved out of our depths, to distinguish between amusement and celebration, between that which is faddish and self-gratifying and that which is lasting and enlarges the soul.

PRACTICE:

Today’s mantra: Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.