Sublime

4. Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

consciousness. In quiet retreat and contemplation, Endymion realizes that success and failure are not the measure of life. He sees the way in which both light and shade, success and failure, and praise and blame, are all parts of life. He sees, even, the ways in which beauty can be revealed through sorrow, and through life’s losses. He decides to

But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass; And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Key figures from your imaginary tribe (the modern version of angels and saints) are with you: their perspective, their habits, their ways of looking at things are in your mind, just as if they were really by your side whispering in your ear. And so we can confront the difficult stretches of existence not simply on the basis of our own small

“In your gift we find our rest,” Augustine concludes. “There are you our joy. Our rest is our peace.”

Johnson shares that while experiencing joy, we don’t lose ourselves, we become more truly ourselves.