I recently snuck up into the mountains to cut wood for some upcoming projects. I wound up in an area that was new to me, Juniper Springs. It is on the leeway of the San Bernardino mountains and sits at about 8000 feet in elevation. The title is apt and the area is also filled with California sagebrush and mountain mahogany. The familiar smell of sagebrush and juniper transported me to southern Oregon and fond memories of time spent on my uncle’s property in the high desert.
Have you ever been so struck by the beauty of a place or an experience that your heart aches? Something about the experience strikes a chord and it leaves your heart so full yet at the same time awakens a yearning for an intangible “something more”. I feel that these experiences are common to being human, but at times I wonder why this is so.
It is an odd paradox, to be filled yet at the same time left wanting more. It seems that our physical needs (for example hunger and its temporary resolution, satiety) do not quite have this tinge. As I push myself away from the dinner table, having just indulged in a rich, filling meal, there is little thought of my next meal. After awakening from a restful night of sleep (quite rare these days), my thoughts do not automatically turn to returning to sleep. On the contrary, I have “had my fill” of sleep, so to speak, and am ready to face a new day.
Yet there are experiences which both fill me and at the same time awaken a previously-slumbering hunger. C.S. Lewis describes this well in his memoir Surprised by Joy (though I am reticent to quote Lewis as one line from Lewis summarily captures what I often fail to describe in an entire essay):
“All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still 'about to be'.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
I believe that my awe and awakened yearning in the mountains was joy. This is just conjecture, but I imagine that those things which fill us the most and which awaken our strongest yearnings do so because they are closest to our identities.
Last week I had some spare time while I was on call and I wandered out to the patio of the psychiatric unit where I was working. I sat down and caught up with some of my patients who were enjoying the sunshine. The courtyard cannot be called beautiful (or even inviting.) It is surrounded on all four sides by high concrete walls decorated with windows into patient rooms on the upper floors of the hospital. The patio is concrete with several large concrete benches and is covered by large triangles of white canvas, more for the sunshine than any precipitation.
I was speaking with an older patient who was sporting his trusty Air Force hat and new slip-on Adidas shoes, his face shrouded by a wispy, white beard. The sun shining on us was warm and pleasant, unlike the harsh thing it had been the last several months. There in that gray courtyard bathed in golden sunlight, as I looked into the smiling eyes of my patient, I was again struck with an aching pang. I felt happy in that moment. It was a very sweet, almost overpowering sensation and mixed with it was a longing for the moment to last just a little bit longer.
I have been musing over the appearance of joy in both of those experiences. How interesting that joy appeared in each place. I suppose I expect joy to be more frequent in places which are so obviously beautiful, but have been pleasantly surprised at its not-infrequent appearance in places like the gray courtyard of a psychiatric hospital while speaking with a man who shouts as often as he smiles at me.
I don’t have any groundbreaking theories about this phenomena. It is an interesting paradox though. I try to fill my life with aesthetically-pleasing, uplifting experiences and they at times do spark joy. Yet so does conversation with a man whose life has been upended and absolutely obliterated by schizoaffective disorder, surrounded on all sides by towering concrete walls. This experience and those like it puzzle me, but it is a pleasant, almost serendipitous bewilderment that makes me take a sharp breath and exclaim, “Isn’t life a curious and unexpected thing?”
I suspect that despite their appearances, these two experiences actually had a great deal in common. They were each, in their own way, beautiful. The high desert was beautiful in an obvious, undeniable way and there was nothing to detract from this. My experience with my patient was also jaw-droppingly gorgeous, but in an unexpected way. For an instant, his soul was illuminated as the courtyard was by that September afternoon sun. Just as the goodness of the warm sunlight could be felt in that bleak, barren place, so did the essence of this man’s being warm the desolation of a life ravaged by mental illness.
These are the sorts of experiences in which I would like to dwell. Not so much the aesthetically-pleasing, Instagram-able sort of beauty which I tend to associate with superficial living but a sort of beauty which is rooted in truth and meaning. This isn’t something that I can necessarily prove but is instead a truth which I believe to be there and will daily choose to believe anew. I suppose that life is filled with far more concrete courtyards than untouched wilderness. Instead of seeking only this wild sort of beauty, I’d like to also seek the beauty which hides in the lined faces of the mentally ill, the starving and the disadvantaged. I believe God is just as present in those experiences as He is at Juniper Springs.
I’m so glad you are experiencing joy in works as well as your free time. Your writing always inspires me, and this post reminds me to stop and appreciate the special moments in life every day. Thank you!