By Timothy Roe, Staff Writer
Being belittled is a terrifying experience; it’s something that goes against our natural egocentricity. Not only that, but it’s assumed that something of freedom is lost when it happens. When you realize how small you are, you think you’re restrained from doing anything meaningful. But what if it’s the other way around? If you believe yourself to be big and special, maybe that’s what stops you from being exactly that?
The sublime, a term first coined by Romantic philosopher Edmund Burke, is defined as a quality of greatness that can’t be comprehended and understood rationally. Along with inspiring a feeling of terror and awe, it makes you feel extremely, extremely small. It’s the same feeling you might get when looking off the edge of a huge mountain pass or observing a storm at sea. In the face of such an overwhelming presence, things shrink; your problems become trivial, and you, yourself, turn smaller than ever. It’s a feeling that destroys your ego, in a pleasant way. As a teenager, the angst that blows life’s problems completely out of proportion causes a great deal of stress, whether or not it’s something to really stress over. Facing the sublime destroys this perspective and creates a new one: these are situations that can be and will be overcome and appreciated. These stresses are hurdles that make you more resilient to hardship and more accepting of yourself.
There’s a strong feeling of uniqueness that comes with a large ego. The feeling that your experiences are special and different from everyone else’s can actually cause more harm than good. Entitlement—the hard fact that you have the right to what you want because of an aptitude for a certain skill—is unhealthy for two reasons: one, being entitled means a lack of satisfaction. Gaining is minimalized and losing is amplified. If you’re entitled to something, and you get it, what have you actually gained? But, if you lose it, you’ve been robbed of an important possession. Two, feeling special deprives you of individuality; it may sound strange, but ponder this for a moment: what makes people “special”? Is it who you are on an individual level, or is it an aptitude for something that’s leveraged you “above” others? Stripped of this skill, what’s really left of you? I’m not saying that you should abandon all your passions in life, but it’s something to realize that nearly everyone has a skill to be proud of, and that being exceptional at a certain thing doesn’t define who you are. The pursuit of developing these skills can be wholesome and healthy; when it’s the only thing you’re living for, it can be very detrimental, however. The most important thing is developing yourself, and reaching a point where you can accept who you are, not what you are.
Developing the mind is similar to developing the body. What do you do when you want a stronger body? You beat the life out of it, give it some time to revive, and then beat some more life out of it. A growth in perspective can be aided greatly by an experience with the sublime. If a mind isn’t exposed to how insignificant it is, then there’s no realization that it needs to become stronger; it stays weak, like a body that’s been disregarded for a long period of time. Through the sublime, ego is deflated, and in turn becomes level with what weaknesses you have. Namely, humility is gained. There’s a great deal of potential locked in everyone’s brain, and identifying what’s weak, challenging those points and then improving on them isn’t easy by any means, but it is most definitely rewarding.
So how do you experience the sublime anyway? Well, the most obvious answer would be to run up a mountain and gaze off the precipice for half an hour. But what’s most important in changing a perspective, any perspective, is reflection. Just think on it. Once you come up with an answer of your own, act on it. Change what’s weak, and control what’s not; then, when you’re no longer special, maybe you can be whatever, whoever you want to be.
