The “Cave” of Enthusiasm
Dr. James Mellon
Yesterday, while on an excursion in Slovenia, I entered a cave that is more than 3 million years old. The cave is named Postojna, and a Disney-like train takes you for a 10-minute drive into the cave before letting you out to explore with your guide for the next hour-plus. As the journey unfolds, you start to understand that, in fact, you are standing in the midst of a 90-million-year-old fortress of limestone that has been carved out by nature into the most breathtaking piece of art you’ve ever seen.
All at once, without warning, my eyes started opening wider than they’d ever been before. Everywhere around me, visions of sculpted brilliance filled my imagination, and I was overwhelmed with what I realized was something so much bigger than the world we inhabit. My heart began to swell and I felt a sense of belonging, wholeness, smallness, largeness, oneness, so many things all culminating in a feeling I’d never felt before. This was ENTHUSIASM!
Enthusiasm: a strong excitement or feeling. Well, if that’s the definition, then this “Cave” is the catalyst for the most extreme demonstration of a word that, truly, isn’t enough to express what I was feeling. In fact, perhaps our words are holding us back. Maybe when we choose a word like “enthusiasm,” we think we know what it means, and we’re held back by its definition. Perhaps what I was feeling doesn’t have a word that adequately defines the moment. AND ... perhaps we should use the words merely as guides to opening ourselves up and allowing even more to fill our minds, our hearts and our souls. This beautiful, formidable and gorgeous “Cave” asked me to look at her/him/they in a way that I’d not understood before this moment. I see you, and I am willing to know you without boxing you in with a definition. That seems right.
What I realized in the “Cave” was that it was all energy, and its shapes and figures went as far back and further than my mind is able to fathom, and it will continue long after I’m a particle floating in space and, perhaps, even after I’ve been created over and over again. I don’t know how any of that works, but I’m willing to be open to it all.
As we reached our final moments in the “Cave,” there was a brief second of sadness when I realized that I probably would never return to this spot. Then I realized that, in truth, we never return to any spot. Life is never what it was and is always transforming into what it is, and then it’s not that again in another second. Funny how we try to hold onto things. I have many pictures of the Postojna cave including the one here. They help me remember ... what it was ... who I am ... and how life is filled with moments of ENTHUSIASM, which really are just moments to ask us to open up to even MORE!