Road Lesson Four: Wow! Moments

The following is from a talk I gave at Mental Health Con on Sept 28, Estherville, Iowa, titled Eight Things I Learned on the Road ...

About a month into being on the road, I started noticing that every day had a big wow! to it. The realization came in loud and clear several months later. This was two and a bit years ago. I had stopped here in Estherville to visit Amy. After three or four days, I was back on the road, headed west on I-90. Three or four hours on the road, in South Dakota, on the banks of the Missouri, I pulled into a rest stop.

Any idea what was there?

Right, the Dignity statue. Amazing, right? (See top photo.)

So here I was, pulling into this rest stop to stretch my legs, having no idea this statue was there, and – Wow! And that’s when it hit me: If you’re not experiencing a wow! every day, you need to change your life.

Now, a wow! doesn’t have to be about stumbling into an amazing statue or some spectacular scenery. It could be hugging your child or being moved by a piece of music or taking a quiet moment to contemplate the sun going down. It could be experiencing vicarious joy over someone else’s good news. It could be finding beauty in unexpected places. It could be a sense of accomplishment, like completing a project or putting a smile on someone’s face or learning a new piece on a musical instrument.

But don’t confuse wow! with some sort of instant pleasure or indulging in a craving or seeing something cool on TV or social media. That’s just temporarily filling in a hole in your psyche. A true wow! comes out of something you devoted some effort to. It doesn’t have to be direct cause and effect. I just happened to stumble into the Dignity statue. But note -  I wasn’t exactly lying on the couch at the time.

So wow! is more like a perception. An attitude. An affirmation of life. So, here we are in Estherville – wow! Isn’t it great that we are all gathered here, sharing a common purpose?

And how does that make you feel?

Does that make sense?

I’m guessing we all need work on our wows. Think of low wow as a warning, like the oil light on the dashboard. You need to fix it right away. Take stock. Closely examine your life. Your work, your relationships, your diet, everything.

If you’re low on wow! then you’re probably high on depression. So, you need to work on the depression. But not just the depression. Everything in your life that may be contributing to that depression.

Listen to your depression. Your anxiety. Your agitation. And so on. These are your oil lights. Your dashboard indicators. They’re telling you something is seriously wrong under the hood and about you.

Adding more wow is not necessarily going to be easy. We’re on a journey, after all. And disappointment and struggle is part of that journey. But the good news is this is your story, your narrative, and you get to be the hero. Do your best to create some wow! in your life.