2023aug06.
2022dec. Harv searches for the source of his life’s youthful-spirit.
I've … had a … feeling staring out at the ocean, my imagination wandering to its unknowable depths, or looking at the stars, speculating how far the light had travelled across the Universe to reach my retina. Encountering things far bigger than yourself can provoke a mixture of emotions: astonishment, wonder, awe, but also humility. Sometimes, it's easy to forget that there is a vast and obscure world still out there, waiting to be explored. Perhaps it's because so much of life is now mediated via a smartphone screen no bigger than our palms. Perhaps it's overfamiliarity: what was wild and remote in the 18th Century is now full of tourists, or as close as a Google search away. Or maybe it's that we've simply stopped looking. After all, the present moment is already overwhelming enough, through information overload, accelerating technologies, injustice, climate change, and more. The hint of threat and mystery had not fully dissipated, however. In the dark gaps between the cloud [Wordsworth] observed "a fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place", through which he could hear the distant power of nature: "…the roar of water, torrents, streams / Innumerable, roaring with one voice!" Seeing and hearing this, [Wordsworth] reflected on the human intellect's ability to approach something far bigger than the self: "There I beheld the emblem of a mind / That feeds upon infinity… a mind sustained / By recognitions of transcendent power." Wordsworth was far from the only writer in this period to be compelled by a sense of the infinite. He and many others in 18th Century Europe were fascinated with the sublime, finding new appreciation for the dynamic power and enormity they found in nature. One thing that made the sublime so appealing to Wordsworth and others was how it stretched the imagination. As the philosopher Emily Brady writes in her 2013 book on the sublime: "A view running through several theories is that as the imagination (or more generally, the mind) is expanded, we also experience a sense of our ability to take in vastness or great power, thereby evoking a sense of our own powers." Or as one 18th Century writer put it, the mind derives "a noble pride" from encountering a "sense of immensity" and "entertains a lofty conception of its own capacity." To illustrate this, Brady cites the emotional experience of staring at the night sky: "In casting our eyes across it we cannot take it all in," she writes. "We can look to the left and the right, and all around, but it seems to go on forever, filling space and extending outwards in all directions in such a way that we cannot put any boundaries around it through perception. Through this kind of aesthetic experience we have a kind of sensuous feeling for the infinite, one which is quite different from any kind of intellectual, mathematical idea of it." Over the past two decades, psychologists have converged on these 200-year-old ideas of the sublime, but from a different angle – and by doing so, they have illuminated other more specific benefits of feeling small in the face of enormity. This body of work, which Keltner tours in his upcoming book Awe (Penguin, January 2023), has helped to clarify that awe comes with myriad mental benefits. Various studies have shown that experiencing awe can reduce stress, discourage rumination, and enhance well-being. It also fosters greater attention to detail, boosts memory and encourages critical thinking. Then there are the pro-social benefits: people in awe are more likely to show generosity, become less individualist, and emphasize a greater sense of connection to others and the world. The Victorian geologist Charles Lyell once wrote that there is an inevitable discomfort that comes when approaching the vast unknowns of the Universe, describing a "painful sense of our incapacity to conceive a plan of such infinite extent". To illustrate how he felt, Lyell described a circle of light expanding into the dark – it illuminates as it goes, but as its circumference grows, so does the boundary between light and dark. In other words, he was suggesting that the more we learn, the more we become aware of our true insignificance and how little we know. "While the scheme of the Universe may be infinite, both in time and space, it is presumptuous to suppose that all sources of doubt and perplexity would ever be removed," Lyell wrote. This is true, but that does not mean that we shouldn't try ever harder to understand our place within the immense world out there. When approaching the unknown, the psychologist Frank Keil talks about the power of wonder, which [Keil] describes as a more active, engaged sense of awe. "Wonder is the engine that drives innovation and inquiry," he tells me; the "accidental impetus" behind humanity's greatest achievements. It implores us to ask: how, what, where, when, what if? "It is one of the most powerful motivations we have as humans, and no one can take it away from us," he says. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221205-the-upsides-of-feeling-small
The foregoing news-article-notes connect H2o’s youth formation of latchkey, parochial, farm, dance hall, worker ‘directly’ into his 85th year — his youthful-spirit then, and now the same, although different in personal experience/memories throughout his latest 75 years, especially contrasted with the selective memories that are warped by discount. In reaction to discount, Harv uses “hagiographic” in the heading of his web site that facilitates his writing/publishing effort in this, his last life-epoch #5, that is, “writer career akin sports career” — now one year in completion.
2022nov02. The reasonable cost of living in Lancaster can help a limited retirement budget stretch further. A home with a mortgage costs a median of $1,556 per month in Lancaster. You can rent an apartment in Lancaster for a median of $1,050 monthly. Lancaster isn't the lowest-cost place to retire in Pennsylvania, but there is a high quality of life for the price. https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/aging/articles/what-makes-lancaster-the-best-place-to-retire