The Other Side

I wanted to take a moment to talk about something that I feel is very important and also, sadly, severely lacking in society today. It's something that I as a writer have drawn upon heavily to create the scenes and sentences that impact people the most; it is something that is required to fully understand and appreciate the world around us, the people in our lives -- it can be applied to anything if you think about it enough. I wish people would more often.

That thing is awe.

Awe is a lot like beauty. It can't really be defined because not everyone experiences it the same way or as a result of the same influences. So instead of discussing the what's and why's of awe, here is a simple exercise.

Music is something that I, personally, barely understand. If you asked me to write a song, I could spend ten years and never accomplish anything hardly unique. Music is a language that all of humanity speaks, but just as in the written word, not everyone is cut out to be a writer. I've listened to a lot of music in my life, and the vast majority of it has been without lyrics. I grew up listening almost exclusively to movie scores, mostly because they were the best ways to get me to really dig deep and harvest the proper emotions I needed to write a specific scene.

A few years ago I watched the movie Gattaca, which focuses on the theory of Genetic Discrimination. It's a beautiful movie, and I fervently suggest you watch it. But I can also say that I enjoy the sound track to this movie better than the actual film itself.

There is one song, in particular, that I want you to listen to: The Other Side.

Now here's the important part: do not listen to this song just by itself. If you do that, you may simply enjoy it, or at the worst find it repetitive. Take this song and place yourself in close proximity with something bigger than yourself. Stand at the base of a sky scraper and stare up the side. Watch a storm rolling in through your neighborhood. Think about your own heart, your own mind, and then connect yourself to the idea that there are more than six billion other people in the world with their own individual mental space, thinking different thoughts, observing and breathing and being something completely unique and different from yourself. Find a dark spot and gaze at the stars and just imagine how small you really are, and how the light you are looking at, a tiny pinprick in an infinitely vast blackness, is actually centuries old, the result of a chemical reaction that may have taken place before society started. You have to actually go do it, because reading these insignificant descriptions will not likely inspire you with true awe.

Awe is so very important, to writers, to engineers, to scientists, to artists, to politicians, to all of humanity, and it is something I think that we take for granted...but perhaps that is because it is such a private thing. What moves one soul may not move another. And that, in itself, is awesome.