Life's sine qua non

Not infrequently, I come across a spark of something almost magical. Call it a flash of numinosity, or a sparkle of illumination, or even perhaps sheer aesthetic - it comes in the hearing of a pure voice, or sighting of a beautiful metatarsal arch. It comes in gaining insight into the mind of a genius, or observing the fluid grace with which certain people seem to prepossess.

All this sounds like a very sensorial experience, but I do know that when it happens to me, I cannot pinpoint exactly what senses or cognition I am using to apprehend the situation. What I do know though, is that it speaks to my soul in some inexpressible way. It makes me feel that there must be such a thing as beauty and truth in the world to be able to experience something like this. To feel so relaxed by the stimulation, to feel so excited by the sense of coherence and harmony that these experiences illicit. A thrill, I suppose, that is something akin to love.

Today I experienced such a moment listening to a lecture. The lecturer, a retired professor of anatomy and histology, left me feeling as though I didn't want him to stop. I just wanted to keep listening to him impart knowledge in his perfectly-formed, andante sentences. I was left with the desire to see more of the elegant way he saw biology, for he possessed the very clarity and alacrity I first felt when I started to fall in love with the amazing interconnectedness (and so simplicity) of Nature's way.

I've felt so strongly this way a few times before - famous people like Audrey Hepburn, Sylvie Guillem, Uliana Lopatkina, Beethoven, Richard Feynman, Anthony Grayling come to mind. But even day-to-day people have their sparkle, their je ne sais quoi that I find gives me hope of heaven.