Engaging Enchantment

I have never been able to agree with the modern worldview that the world is disenchanted and life is devoid of any meaning and purpose, but perhaps my love of life is a little excessive. I can find amazement in the simple act of brushing one’s teeth. I am not religious, I do not believe there is life after death, but I find the world we live in and the creative ability of human beings (and all other organisms) so beautiful that I am sometimes moved to tears of joy. I am no Pollyanna, and I am by no means bursting with joy all the time, but I firmly believe that beautiful details abound in the everyday, and if we take note of them, we will find “reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts” (as Rachel Carson once spoke).
“To be enchanted is to be struck and shaken by the extraordinary that lives among the familiar and the everyday” (Bennet 4). My work at the needle exchange is not difficult, and is many times boring and slow-going, but when someone comes in to exchange and we meet and converse, I am sometimes overcome with the simple joy of discovery and interaction that makes my work satisfying and worthwhile. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, a lady came in with her three-year-old some, and I watched him and played with him for a few minutes outside while his mother exchanged needles. While he was showing me his toy cars and demonstrating how they work, I suddenly experienced and inexplicable feeling of content. I felt confirmation that my work, however miniscule, was necessary and helpful to my life and to others.
In a disenchanted world, my work would remain meaningless, because the modern world is “a place of dearth and alienation” (Bennet 3). But these experiences of joy and love (for people who are essentially strangers) prove otherwise; our world is not completely disenchanted because joy provides meaning to life, and resultantly propels ethics. As Bennet points out, “joy enhances the prospect of ethical engagement,” and “one of the tasks proper to ethics is to ‘en-joy’ the world” (13).
Life is certainly not hunky-dory all of the time, but the moments and details of beauty and joy within it make the world not only worth living in, but worth striving to make better through our interactions with others. “I pursue a life with moments of enchantment rather than an enchanted way of life,” and I find moments of enchantment in my work at the Marin AIDS Project. If we work from the assumption that the world is disenchanted, we will most likely find that it is. Instead, we create our own reality, and there is no reason why we cannot live lives of significance, happiness, and ethical engagement. As Barry Green, author of The Inner Game of Music so perfectly said, “It is our state of consciousness, the way we perceive the world, that determines the kind of experiences we will have.”