You’re driving along a beautiful road roaming through undulating countryside, a farmland-bush patchwork. Or you’re winding up towards a mountain pass, forested slopes and rocky outcrops way above you and the river way down below. Or you’re travelling eastwards along Highway 1 across the Nullarbor, nothing but boredom and saltbush, endless near misses of huge trucks sliding improbably past; with the promise of cliffs and ocean, the Great Australian Bite, a few kilometres, unseen and tantalizing, off to the right – forever off to the right.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a sign: “Lookout 5 km ahead”. You’ve already been to two today, which looked more or less the same as each other, but there’s no way you’re not going to this one too. You’re drawn to it as if by a magnet, by a gravitational pull. You can’t stop yourself. You drive down the unsealed road to where the other cars are parked. You get out, walk to the cliff top, and stare.
You never know how long to stare for, do you? How long is enough? Cliffs, waves, the tiny figure of a could-be whale in the distance, endless ocean and sky. It’s beautiful, amazing. You want to somehow “drink it all in”. You stare and stare. You’re looking for something and you never know what it is you’re looking for. You futilely take photos, trying somehow to record it, define it, take it away with you so you can relive the experience, show it to others. But it escapes your camera, your mediocre photographic skills (usually). Doesn’t matter; the view makes you feel great. You eventually, reluctantly, drag yourself away.
The cliché is, with a grand landscape, or seascape or skyscape, that you feel your utter insignificance in the face of it. But you know, I think the reverse is actually true. Yes, there is an initial futility, even a terror, as we stare out into the void; but beyond that, and the thing that really draws us there and charms and intrigues us, and makes us want to keep coming back for more, is an experience, a realization, of our utter significance. We realize, in fact, that we are, truly, part of something big.
Think about it. If it was just insignificance we felt, we would only be repelled. Like the sick feeling of vertigo, we would look away, draw back from the precipice or balcony, retreat to safety inside the apartment, keep driving and not bother. But, no, we keep looking; can’t stop ourselves looking. Insignificance is what we normally feel, day-to-day, moment-by-moment; we go to the lookout for the antidote.
The vista is profoundly significant for us, intrinsically meaningful; even when it is quotidian, prosaic – a beautiful garden, a local park, a quaint valley, a field of wheat. When we look at it, yes, we let it wash through us; but, more than that, we search for something in it, yearn to be a part of it, feel ourselves part of it.
It is a similar experience when we stand before a beautiful painting, when we open ourselves up to any work of art. What is it exactly we are looking, searching for, in the landscape, in the artwork? Here’s my answer. It will shock you, make you laugh out loud. When you stare dumbly at a landscape or an artwork, what you are looking for, what you are hoping to catch a glimpse of, is your soul. And not just your soul in itself, but your soul in the world. You couldn’t get anything more significant than that.
How can this be? Well, when we feast our eyes on a lovely landscape, our perception takes our consciousness out from our body to encompass an entire scene. In doing so we imagine, even if unconsciously, the even wider world beyond the scene at hand; indeed, there is a very real sense of the entire cosmos, stretching out to infinity and beyond. In the act of perception and imagination we become part of the greater whole, become one with it, find our place in it, find our home in it. It is as if our soul, no longer confined to quarters inside our head, expands to merge with the soul of the universe itself. That’s if you believe in such things, of course!
So that is why, I think, we always thrill to the prospect of a beautiful view, why we are drawn to the lookout by a force stronger than gravitation: to find ourselves in the world. Yes, such experiences are fleeting, ephemeral, we’re not always in the mood and we get bored very easily. But we keep coming back for more, keep coming back to drink at the well.
Can you think of a better explanation? Can you think of any other explanation at all? Our love of a great view is, I think, otherwise completely inexplicable. So, next time you’re up a high tower staring open-mouthed at a grand vista, I invite you to ask yourself this question: do you lose yourself in the landscape, or do you in fact find yourself?
January 2020