The Ecstatic

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.–– Emily Dickinson

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about ecstasy. About the ecstatic. What does it mean? When I think if ecstasy I think of running out in to the snow to slip into a hot tub, the steam rising off the water. Or, in the middle of a storm, sitting by a fire. Sometimes it’s listening to rain falling on the roof. Or, this week, for me, it’s burying my face in the fur of my new puppy. Ecstasy has range, is elastic, can stretch to accommodate so much more than we imagine. There were moments of my long labor with my son where I drifted into something like sleep but was really more of a velvety blackness from which only the next contraction would rouse me, a minute or so later, from what seemed to be eternity.

As children, we spun in circles until we fell down, like Sufis in search of union. Jumped up and down an anything springy to feel the rush of blood to our brains and through our limbs, knowing that moving our bodies almost to the point of nausea was ecstatic. Running after pigeons. Chasing fireflies. Butterflies. Racing our bikes so fast we fell and skinned our knees on the hot concrete, were left with scabs that darkened into armor we could pick at, pull from our broken flesh. We flew kites, lifted on the wind, watched their silvery tails undulate in the late afternoon sun. Feet in a brook, hands in the mud.

How often ecstasy arrives among the elements: Sun on our faces, wind at our backs, water pouring over us, hot sand under our toes. If I were to describe Heaven, it would be this: enough time and presence to savor the thrill of the simplest, most ordinary things. I want to think pleasure is complicated, expensive, rare, sometimes even dangerous. But more and more it seems that the finest, most accessible pleasure is hidden in the hot water pouring from the tap as I wash the dishes, in the cup of tea I drink before bed. The slight breeze in my hair.

And today I have made the decision to do my best to keep coming back to this everyday exhilaration. To see it as a moment to stop and touch the tree of life, feel its bark beneath my palms. I do not claim this lightly. I know how far I can wander from joy, how deep I can go into the tangle of my to do list. My regrets. My fears. My, my, my. I’m sure you catch my drift. You’ve wandered there.  But let’s sit down and pour ourselves a cup of tea. Let’s walk outside at night see a drift of cloud covering the moon. Let’s listen to the words of Franz Kafka, who once said:

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”