… likes yours trUDly … has been featured – or, rather the book it spun off has been featured – in David Brooks’ end-of-year column at the New York Times.
The most real things in life, [the book’s authors] write, well up and take us over. They call this experience “whooshing up.” We get whooshed up at a sports arena, at a political rally or even at magical moments while woodworking or walking through nature.
Dreyfus and Kelly say that we should have the courage not to look for some unitary, totalistic explanation for the universe. Instead, we should live perceptively at the surface, receptive to the moments of transcendent whooshes that we can feel in, say, a concert crowd, or while engaging in a meaningful activity, like making a perfect cup of coffee with a well-crafted pot and cup.
We should not expect these experiences to cohere into a single “meaning of life.” Transcendent experiences are plural and incompatible. We should instead cultivate a spirit of gratitude and wonder for the many excellent things the world supplies.
January 2nd, 2011 at 11:09AM
“Transcendent whooshes,” as used here, seems pretty close to the concept of *flow* as defined by Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi.
There is a bit of a contradiction in the Brooks piece; he mainly focuses on whooshes as a *collective* experience, as a the stadium or the rock concert or even the church (and the article itself is titled “The Arena Culture”), but elswhere he points out that one can experience whooshes “while engaging in a meaningful activity, like making a perfect cup of coffee with a well-crafted pot and cup,” ie, while engaging in *individual* activity.
January 2nd, 2011 at 4:40PM
david: I agree on both counts. Good points.
January 3rd, 2011 at 6:39PM
[…] Oh and you know what else? See that post a few posts under this one about whooshing up experiences? I think I had one at the New Year’s Eve party I went […]