Weird and Wonderful

It's that time of year for everyone: a time of transitions. Letting go and taking hold of new things, like a trapeze artist in the circus, except, in my case, far less graceful. A whirlwind of emotions from excitement, sadness in saying goodbye, apprehension and fear.

It's no wonder that we are often tempted to remain stagnant in life, to stay in our comfort zone of what we know and what we control: to be in transition is to be in a moment of vulnerability. This is a moment where mistakes are made, missteps that are sometimes comic and sometimes tragic.

Transitions are when we realize that we are in far less control of our lives than we would like to think: all of the things that we have been building, or checking off the list of things to get or to have, are so fragile. In an instant, they can be gone. We think of ourselves as building toward certain goals, building a certain identity, but in moments of change, we see how fragile the things we build really are.

What I have learned is that awe and wonder are powerful responses in such moments of uncertainty. Colin Meloy has a beautiful song about the birth of his first child, in which he is in awe of how "weird and wonderful" a new baby is. He could have written a song about how scary new babies are, or how fragile and bothersome and expensive they are. But instead, he wrote a song about simply being in awe of this fragile and precious thing.

I think it's the perfect response for any sort of new birth or new transition in life: awe. It is an act of faith to continue to move forward in life. All the evidence suggests that moving forward and transitioning to new things greatly increases your risk for getting wrinkles, for making mistakes, for getting your heart broken, for saying goodbye to people that you love. But in awe and wonder we can begin to move forward and risk this weird and beautifully fragile thing called life: because it is all passing, it is all transitioning until we reach that final destination, where awe will be the truest response for eternity.