But I Am Always in Awe
Someone asked me recently if I’m still shocked by events.
By people.
By life.
I answered honestly.
No.
And I could feel the weight of that word land heavier than I intended.
Because “no” can sound like numbness.
Like distance.
Like indifference.
But that isn’t what lives here.
I’m not shocked anymore because shock belongs to a nervous system that is constantly bracing for impact.
It’s the body flinching before it knows what has arrived.
It’s surprise mixed with fear, urgency, and the reflex to react.
Shock assumes the world should be different than it is.
And something in me has stopped arguing with reality.
But awe…
Awe never left.
If anything, it deepened.
Awe doesn’t jolt.
It opens.
It doesn’t shout.
It hums quietly in the chest when you realize how vast this moment is, and how small the story you were telling about it was.
I don’t gasp at life anymore.
I bow to it.
I don’t get thrown off balance by events the way I once did, not because I care less, but because I’m less attached to how things are supposed to go.
Shock collapses time into reaction.
Awe stretches time into presence.
One is chaos.
The other is intimacy.
When you are shocked, you are knocked out of yourself.
When you are in awe, you are returned.
Returned to breath.
Returned to humility.
Returned to the quiet miracle of being here at all.
Stillness doesn’t flatten emotion.
It refines it.
It removes the static so you can hear what’s always been playing underneath.
And underneath the noise, life is astonishing.
Not dramatic.
Not theatrical.
Just endlessly, tenderly alive.
I am no longer shocked.
But I am constantly in awe.
And in that awe,
stillness awaits.