Exceeded

I go out to the world where things grow twisted and abundant together, intending fulfillment. I aim to reconfigure my soul. I suppose that matching its rhythms to those of the trees and vines moving with the wind will elevate me. Yes, elevation - recently identified by the scientists as a distinct emotion - is what I seek.

And I do find it, but its composition is surprising. I thought elevation would be a sort of rising. I expected the sky to bring me up. I imagined myself serene like a pond in the night.

That is not how it works. I climbed a mountain, but I fell short. I was elevated, yes. I felt peace, yes. But the peace was the mountain’s, and it did not translate. I walked upward, and each step revealed what my own feeling was not becoming.

At first this disappointed me. I felt disingenuous. Like I was affecting Thoreau, and just playing at Walden. Pretending to get something out of it.

Then I reconsidered. I had “gotten something out of it.” The feeling of elevation is not one of arrival, as I had thought. It is more like a striving without stress. You reach, and fall short, and are happy.