The feeling of awe.
When we strolled through the botanical garden of Lund, he’d suddenly ask to borrow my phone or diverge from the path we were on. He’d be out of himself over how nice the flowers were, how nice the conversation we were having was or how cute that little cloud was. He’d be in awe.
We met at a conference in the building across my apartment complex. I sort of stumbled upon the conference a couple of weeks earlier, and the feeling of possibilities was prominent. We clicked the first evening where there was dinner. The randomness that some would call synchronicity gave us seats besides one another.
He’d be around for a couple of days after the conference which thrilled me. So we planned a couple of day trips for him to experience Malmö and the surroundings properly. He had some suggestions on what to do, and I gave some alternatives for those suggestions. Creating a map both geographically and in our calendars, the week was set.
One of the appointments that we made was with a woman running a pottery shop. She made all of the things herself, and they were beautiful. We took the train out to Svedala, a small, almost suburban, city. We walked across the whole thing whilst I tried to explain my judgemental approach towards the people living there. Explaining that from my point of view, they’re white trash with strange values. He smiled, put his head a bit on the side and asked curiously whether or not I believed they thought the same thing about me.
After going to the pottery shop, we took a train to Lund. Even though I study there, I don’t know the city at all. The part of the university that I attend is a five minute walk from the train station, and that’s about as far as my explorations had gone. We met up with a friend of his, and took a stroll through the city with the botanical garden in sight. That’s where he really went nuts, going on about how beautiful it was. He did it in the pottery shop as well, but now he got really happy about the state of things.
What Deepak taught me during that day is that awe is to be found where we look for it. Whenever we want to, the feeling is to be found. I usually don’t let that feeling in, as the narrator in my head don’t let me. I think the same narrator has taken its place in many more heads and done so quietly.
As Helena asked when I brought that narrator up, I’d like for you to ask yourself. How is that narrator helping you? What joy does that narrator bring to you?
What I realised that day in the pottery shop as well as in the botanical garden is that the narrator could be the one in awe, if we choose it to be. And I’ll tell you one thing: Deepak seemed to enjoy every piece of pottery, every flower and every second a bit more than I did.
