A big view

What is it about a massive vista that makes the viewer feel so strongly?

The size, the age, the beauty. It's like when you look out onto a landscape that is vast and majestic, almost to the point that it becomes difficult to comprehend, something happens. Something happens within, a change surrounding emotion and perspective.

Perhaps when you realise that a physical space is so large and beautiful that your mind can't really grasp or understand it, peace is found in the knowledge that other incomprehensible issues might be beautiful too. Why do bad things.....? What does it mean when......? How can suffering be so.....? What is the reason for....? Who would deserve......?

The answer to many of these kinds of questions are "I don't know", or something vague enough to actually mean I don't know: "there is a plan", "luck I guess", "everything happens for a reason", "when a door closes a window opens", "I don't know".

It seems to me that some things in life are well beyond our ability to explain, understand, categorise and even really sense effectively. What is love? Why am I here? Where will I go when I die? When will I understand life?

I think there is value in becoming comfortable with not knowing. Accepting that understanding life and the world isn't what it is all about. This is easy in times of happiness and peace. How lovely to say that right now I feel excellent and I don't really even know why. In times of strife however we seem to frantically search for a grasp on the why. This may not actually be helpful.

When I look at an epic view that includes shapes, structures, light and movement I feel a peaceful acceptance that the space before me is too significant, too magnificent for me to ever truly understand. I give up attempting to evaluate and categorise, label and know. Simply the task is just to look and feel wonder, smile and breath in the calm sensation of acceptance.

The lesson is directly before us, parts of the world and my life are clearly beyond my understanding. How beautiful to be able shift all that energy and effort towards appreciation and finding value.

The world is wonderful and terrible, knowing why does not change that.