In Athens, Greece, you can climb a mountain called the Hill of the Muses. At the top, there’s a second-century monument to Filopappos, a prominent Greek who died in 116 AD. Its marble facade, while partially destroyed and lost to time, still shows engravings of gladiators. Below, whitewashed buildings cover the hills and valleys of Attica, stretching so far in all directions that they seem to slide into the Aegean Sea. If you’ve timed your hike correctly, the setting sun will illuminate its sapphire ripples and waves. In the other direction, mountains loom. Travelers from all continents, of every race and creed, enjoy the show alongside you. As the last speck of the golden sun slips away, everyone claps, echoing Greek gratitude for their beautiful land.
If you’re up on that hill, where the muses supposedly lie with you, you feel transcendent. Two thousand years of history loom in front of you, embedded in the marble monument, and then there’s the Acropolis, bathed in light and gleaming below you. And, atop the mountain, people from all over the world congregate to share in a pleasure more ancient than Athens or perhaps people themselves: the setting sun.
It’s in moments like this that you realize who you are by changing your perspective. You’re a little piece of an amazing project of life that consists of seas and mountains and, most importantly, other people. Indeed, it’s the presence of others, of those you don’t know and perhaps some you do, that drives the experience of transcendence. In moments like this, it seems silly to pretend to be wealthier than you are, silly to show that you can speak several languages, silly to worry about your scuffed shoes or the brand of your sunglasses. As you stand among so many others, those things reveal themselves as trifles, and relationships become the ultimate and only sign of wealth – the true measure of transcendence.
These relationships are what draws you in to life, what gives your life meaning and value beyond yourself. They fulfill a deep need that’s so integral to our humanity that we often overlook it. Relationships are what help us become ourselves, what makes us thrive.
We do not need to travel the world or stand atop ancient ruins with even more ancient views to understand this. Because the heart of all of life is at relationship, if we have our relationships in order, then we can experience these other things to their greatest potentials. They open our eyes to the value in every moment because each moment can be shared with those we love. Relationships fuse once-mundane activities — those long escalators in subway terminals, the onerous business meetings, seemingly never-ending study sessions — with an eternal significance.
Experiencing who we were meant to be — who we really are — can happen in transcendent moments like atop the Hill of the Muses. But true self-actualization steadies and maintains this state, making wellness and happiness a part of life. And this real self-actualization will come through love, through relational wellness, through listening and sharing your world with another in the most vulnerable and daring ways possible. Then, you can see the sunset for what it is: a glimpse at what your life might be like, or, if you’re further along the journey to self-actualization, what it already is.
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