Awe-njoyment

I grew up watching Formula 1 with my uncle. At the time, all I really cared about was the crashes—the bigger, more dramatic and shocking the better.

What else would you expect from a young lad of 6?

(That said, I did also love watching my favourite driver of all time, Juan Pablo Montoya, come out of nowhere as the first racer to poke the big scary bear that was Michael Schumacher—the era-defining champion of the time.)

When we moved away from where my uncle lived in 2005ish, I stopped watching until ye ‘olde rona took the world by storm in 2020. Incredibly, being a sport that relocates around the globe on a weekly basis, F1 was the first event to return to action—a mere 3 or 4 months after the world shut down.

This time around though, my reason for watching was much more mature.

I’d since discovered that I find heaps of inspiration, joy, and awe in watching people at the top of their respective discipline try to perform at their peak.

From musicians to chess grandmasters to cyclists, watching the best of the best be the best is fascinating to me. And the discipline I’ve found the most incredible lately is MotoGP—the two-wheeled equivalent of Formula 1.

These guys are fucking insane. They’ve got to be twisted in the head to do what they do, get right back on the bike after the tumbles they take, and the millimeter-perfect precision they need to perform well is nigh unfathomable.

Such as being able to replicate JUST the right amount of lean angle needed to corner as fast as possible, brushing their shoulders, knees and elbows on the tarmac… Lap after lap after lap, while travelling at 100s of km/hr…

Bwoah 🤯

This pursuit of awe-njoyment is something I’ve found personally beneficial, in the same vein as the value of play I wrote about recently. And there’s certainly a connection between awe-njoyment and play that’s worth exploring.

So I’ll ask you:

What interests, activities, and hobbies do you invest time into solely for the sake of the experience? What lights you up to watch, read, or do?

If nothing comes to mind, I daresay that’s something to address ASAP…

For the good of your own well-being!

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander Mullan

P.S. Here’s a haiku I wrote about sipping a morning espresso in the garden, as the sun begins warming the earth and drying the dew:

chirp trill swish flap buzz
golden warmth sniff slurp clink hum
now the day begins.

🥰