The supernatural, sorta
When the universe is in your fingertips
I was maybe ten years old, standing in the yard, staring up at a tree branch waving in the wind, and suddenly I sensed I was both a small, individual thing in the universe and also somehow deeply connected to everything else.
I remember the experience being intensely physical. It felt like adrenalin, like a thrill. There was an energy running through me, from my feet to my fingertips, plus an intense tingling on the top of my head—as though an electric current had entered my body from the ground, and I might wind up levitating at any moment.
Also, I thought if I didn’t move, didn’t pay it much attention, the feeling might stay with me forever—and this lasted about fifteen seconds. It’s one of the oddest, most distinct experiences from my childhood.
One-with-nature experiences, a sense of universal connection, have been recorded by humans for ages. Some people describe it as transcendence or epiphany. For others it’s mystical, supernatural, a brush with God. I experienced it again—similarly intense, similarly physical—two times during my twenties via drugs, one time after a so-called hero’s dose of psychedelic mushrooms, one time after MDMA. The experiences were profound in the moment, though both led to hour-plus experiences of feeling trapped inside my mind, a terror that I’d permanently lost my grip.
It may be obvious I prefer what occurred when I was a kid.
Though as an aside, did you also spend your childhood wondering if other people thought like you thought? If the impulses and emotions of your first-person perspective were occurring inside that dude across the street? I remember, around the same age as that backyard experience, finding it so weird that I could barely observe my own thoughts, let alone anybody else’s.
As another aside, on the topic of people observing people, I read an interesting piece this week, published back in March: “Why Psychology Hasn’t Had a Big New Idea in Decades.” One line that stood out:
Despite some honest attempts, psychology has never had a paradigm, only proto-paradigms. We’re still more like alchemy than chemistry.
I mention it because as I understand it, alchemy, the attempt to turn metals into gold, was the predecessor of chemistry as we know it. Which would then make psychology here the modern forerunner of… what? Turning the self into software?
Anyway, in an attempt to tie this together, how about this: I’m currently reporting a long story for GQ about young people experiencing despair. I can’t say yet exactly why they’re experiencing despair, not before the story comes out, but let’s just say, uh, yeah, profound despair. And for the first time in my writing life, the story’s getting to me, physically. I approach the laptop, my fingers tremble. I need to interview someone on the phone, I experience dread. The main character in the article hosted a wild event last weekend, and I almost didn’t make it—I wanted and needed to go, the story required it, but it took a lot out of me just to get into my car.
It’s a weird aspect of the job, osmosis. To see life from another person’s perspective, feel the feelings they describe, and then experience how those feelings somehow seep into your own. At the same time, mid-week, I was feeling agitated and anxious one morning, and I impulsively stood up and went outside. There’s a tall walnut tree a few steps from my office. I walked up to it and touched its bark. I left my hand there and leaned back, looked up and stared through the leaves, at the sky, and quickly I felt calmer, more focused.
It wasn’t the childhood experience, not really, but it was tied to it, and it took me back. And right away I was rooted again in my psyche and something more.
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“Meditations in an Emergency” is a weekly essay from author Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with three-plus things to love, plus a monthly travel-lust ballyhoo.
Rosecrans is a correspondent for GQ, a contributor at Travel + Leisure, and the bestselling author of Everything Now: Lessons From the City-State of Los Angeles, winner of the California Book Award. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
For books, articles, bio, contact info: rosecransbaldwin.com.