Look After Your Mind – A Sense of Perspective
In the closing paragraphs of D H Lawrence’s novel, ‘Sons and Lovers’ the protagonist Paul Morel thinks of himself as ‘one tiny upright speck of flesh, less than an ear of wheat lost in the field.’ The image has stuck in my mind, because for me anyway it gives me a sense of perspective. While it’s easy to think of oneself as the centre of things – that the whole world revolves around me – in fact I am just a tiny component in what might be an infinite universe. It’s humbling.
From a sub-atomic particle
To illustrate the point further, you can find video clips on YouTube that zoom out from the tiniest subatomic particles to superclusters of galaxies. These, as far as we know, form the largest structures in the cosmos. One clip that I viewed recently is called ‘Powers of Ten’. I find such thoughts mentally healthy, partly because they can evoke feelings of awe and wonderment. They reinforce the feeling that the world we live in, and that the universe in which we are embedded, is such an incredible thing. This idea applies whatever one’s religious/spiritual beliefs or in the absence of them.
Keeping a sense of awe
The educationist Margaret Meek asserts that young children see the world with ‘firstness’. This is the notion that so much that they see and hear is fresh and new and wonderful. I think that we need not lose that sense of amazement as adults. Yesterday, a warm day for this time of year, my wife rushed into my study and said with great excitement that she had just seen her first butterfly of the season. Her enthusiasm was infectious and lifted my mood for the rest of the day. This puts me in mind of the poem ‘Desiderata’ by Max Ehrmann, which closes with the lines ‘With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.’
It’s so easy to become downhearted with all the horrors going on in the world, so I try to keep Ehrmann’s words in mind, as I look out for the season’s next butterfly.
Steve Bowkett
