Susan Watkins -- Topic of Choice 5

I had a conversation with another friend of mine a while ago about feeling like we didn't belong in this world-- more than just wanting a new job, or place to live, or friends, but rather actually feeling like we were meant for something/somewhere different. I tried to explain C.S. Lewis' conclusion, "If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world," by talking about how we don't have natural desires that can't be filled... i.e. we become hungry because such a thing as food exists, lonely because such a thing as relationship exists, etc. To me this makes perfect sense, and at the time she kind of nodded and agreed.

However, later we talked about it again and she confessed that the concept seemed beyond her. She is a science major, and she said that when I first presented the idea to her the only thought she could come up with was about how our body releases chemical signals that tell us we're hungry. She couldn't get past the process-oriented thought pattern that her classes have drilled into her. It struck me as alarming and tragic, because so little of our world can be dissected in this way-- the fact that she literally couldn't grasp the concept of "cosmic significance" because she was so entrenched in scientific process actually upset me. She said she felt it was partially because she had so little time for creative and discursive outlet between school projects that her skills in these areas had decreased, and we wondered whether she shouldn't hurry up and enroll in a humanities course before it was too late for her to regain them altogether.

It still bothers me that this is the case, not because it's the opposite end of the spectrum from where I stand but because I think this trend severely cripples people who succumb to it. We get so focused on minutae that we forget to look at the big picture, and in the process miss out on a lot of potential for beauty and wonder. I think it's possible to find beauty in detail, but that aspect of tremendum that assaults us through the big picture is absent, so I think it's harder. Focusing too much on the big picture is of course negative too-- so I guess we have to try to train ourselves in continually rediscovering a balance so that we can more fully experience life.