Peak Experience

One afternoon a few days ago I went out into the yard to toss the frisbee for my dog Buddy. Amid the branches of the dormant chamisa, saltbush, and cholla flit about a half dozen western bluebirds, a completely new sighting for me and one so captivating, I didn't even think about grabbing my camera. Those minutes, the birds, are still vivid in my mind as I write this.

It's one peak experience among many this past week, a tangible result no doubt of being more intentional with my attention. In a book I just finished--The Craft of the Novel by Colin Wilson--the author makes some closing remarks concerning his own "de-vitalised, mechanical state" being exacerbated by his daily work (which he enjoyed) and a generalized anxiety or fear occasioned by modern life. He writes,

". . . once we recognise that the intensity [with] which we 'see' the world depends completely on the amount of 'interest' we put into the perceptive process, we begin to gain a kind of precarious control over our own moods and peak experiences. . . . The philosopher Edmund Husserl made the basic discovery that all perception is 'intentional': that is, that when you look at something, you throw your attention at it, like a stone. If you stare at it passively, without this effort, you fail to notice it" (225-6).

I haven't read much Husserl, but I resonate with that observation. I feel this vitalism, that I'm having more 'peak' experiences because of this attention practice.

But I simultaneously have been struggling to communicate the meaning or value I attach to my days spent in this way, especially when friends or family inquire as to what I've been up to with my time. My bank account has not grown any larger; I don't have any new skill to put on my resume. These experiences aren't even traditional peak experiences like successfully kayaking tricky rapids or climbing a 14er; this isn't going to drive traffic by the hundreds to my website. I can imagine trotting out this story of bluebirds at a social gathering, how people's eyes would glaze over or scan the room for an escape and then literally move away from the boring bluebird dude. I can't even say something like, "Well, I can die happy now that I've seen that." I don't have a life list of birds I want to spot. I didn't even know I wanted to see bluebirds.

So why was that experience or any of the others I might have mentioned so valuable? I can only gesture toward some reckoning:

• perhaps the thrill, the way my breath caught, the gasp born of wonder

• perhaps because of the effort and persistence required to train attention, that I've had to learn how to throw my attention and to aim at the right or better targets

• perhaps it's that these experiences have all been free, just happening and open for the noticing. Such bounty and beauty.

• perhaps it's about relief, a liberation from the grip of these other systems of valuation (how much do I make, what can I buy, who have I helped, how many kids and grandkids do I have, what companies have I built, do I have enough to retire, what power over others do I exercise).

There's a popular set of questions asked around intentionality and meaning creation in life: what would you do if you only had ten minutes left to live? How about a week? How about a month, a year, five years? The exercise is supposed to refocus priorities as well as giving the all-important nod to what we all know but can't hold in mind for very long: that we are going to die. We don't know how long we have to live, whether this moment-minute-day-year will be our last. Devilishly difficult to be that present and intentional, so maybe this is the value I'm finding in my days and in this attention practice: if my last ten minutes were devoted to watching the bluebirds, feeling all that I felt in that moment, my mind finally focused and quiet, I'd say I spent my last minutes truly, magnificently alive. What if get five more years of being this fully, magnificently alive? How utterly, indescribably rich.