Transcendental

When I was 19 years old, I saw the universe for the first time. The air was silent, as if it was scared to breathe. I was alone in a sea of sand, recently robbed of all of its color. It is such a strange sensation lying alone in the middle of the Sahara Desert with nothing but miles of moving mountains mutilating the landscape I just saw an hour ago. I wasn't alone in the sense that there weren't other people in my immediate vicinity. Instead, .

Let's rewind a bit and provide some much-needed context. I was going to college for the first time at UMass Amherst. Naturally, I chose to live what I thought to be the "college life". I lived every day swiping on my phone, typing on my laptop, and staring at my TV. I was in my freshman year trying to find/make plans to party 6 out of 7 days of the week (I needed at least one day to drink water). I mostly found myself in old miserable Massachusetts houses, neglected/destroyed by uncaring college tenants and given up on by landlords. I spent most of my time on my phone filming everything, on my phone swiping on Tinder, or on my phone texting people what "the move" was. Fraternities were a different beast entirely, though at the time there was no place I'd rather be but dancing on those sticky floors.

On those very same sticky floors, I never expected to meet the (first) love of my life while dressed as Waldo from the classic children's book series, "Where's Waldo?". Much less did I expect to meet her while not on my phone. She was dressed as a bunny, as many do on Halloween... a short blonde girl who had an air about her that left a lasting impression in a night that normally would have been a blur. I woke up the next morning, sent a text saying "heyyy I don't know if you remember me, but...", and the rest was history.

Months later, I met her father and found out she had been hiding the fact that her family was filthy rich. Though I may have known this sooner if I wasn't constantly buried in my phone. Being not very well-off in my upbringing, my world was quickly expanded as I passed through the gates only money can open. I took pictures of my food at the best restaurants and spread my new lavish life across social media, raking in the likes. This new life was a far cry from the non-materialistic "Thoreau-esc" lifestyle I had so proudly stated that I would follow in the pre-sticky floors era. But who cares? These things are shiny and modern, and Thoreau was, like, a million years old.

Many months later, she felt like travelling, which she often did on a whim (rich people don't have to save up). I asked the (first) love of my life where she desired to go. I remember that she quickly retorted, "Anywhere but Europe, I'm so over Europe.". Here I was, a guy who felt lucky enough to go to Canada when I was a kid to see Niagara Falls. I replied, "Oh totally. Europe is probably so boring anyway.". I mean come on; I'm not going to argue with a girl I was head over heals in love with that was offering to take me across the world. So, "we" decided on Morocco, a place that I didn't know how to spell the name of, much less know anything about the culture, environment, language, architecture, traditional art, social norms, etc. I only cared if they had electricity to charge my phone and cool things to post on social media.

What seemed to be minutes later, we were on the best of planes. I naturally took a picture and posted it for those sweet, sweet likes. We were bound for Morocco! It was my first international travel experience and her monthly international travel experience. She took care of the little stuff such as the itinerary, hotels, experiences, and finances. I took care of the important stuff like the picture-taking, the Wi-Fi-finding, and the Snapchat-storying.

The first day was great... there was a pool I took pictures next to with the hashtag #Moroccool. This was easily one of the most embarrassing captions I've ever made. The second day I was introduced to what is commonly referred to as a "call to prayer". I thought that the city was being evacuated with the voice of a man heard blaring through a loudspeaker at dawn. My social media followers informed me this was a religious practice after I posted the video. The third day I had heat exhaustion and had to be buried in bags of ice. The fourth day my phone died, and I got anxious because of it. The fifth day a peacock woke me up at sunrise and introduced me to what a wine hangover is, the only recollection of the night before was to be found in my phone. The sixth day I thought I was going to get robbed, and was subsequently robbed. Thank goodness he only took my grandfather's watch (a family heirloom) and not my phone. And on the seventh day, we did everything but rest.

On this day, I climbed onto the back of a dromedary, or what is more commonly known as one-hump camel. I was so excited. This was going to get so many likes. "But wait... where are we?" - The thought passed through my head after I had just taken a 3-hour taxi ride out of any area that even remotely resembled human-inhabited land. There was not much to take pictures of on that cab ride, so I took a nap. I was on a camel (which spit on my beautiful new robe), and I was completely unaware that I was on the edge of oblivion. I paused for the first time outside of the context of watching a Netflix show. I took this second and looked at a massive mound of sand.

We started to climb... or more accurately, I continued to sit, and the camels started to climb. The (first) love of my life was on a camel behind me, but my phone was closer: glued to my hand, with my thumb automatically pressing the circular icon. Then, tragedy struck. The very same screen I had been looking at the world around me through went black with a flashing flame icon. My precious phone had overheated. I suddenly realized that I was sweating. I guess it was kind of hot in the Sahara Desert.

Time was dictated purely through the level of the scorching sun in the sky. This was an incredibly hard task because the dunes stretched farther than any landscape I had ever seen and constantly warped the horizon. It was as if the world's chest was rising and falling as it inhaled and exhaled. I looked behind me, and terror shot through my body. It looked the same as the left, right, and forward surrounding. The wind covered our tracks as if we were headed towards a natural secret.

This was exactly where we were headed. Somehow, the guide managed to find this small tent miles and miles from where we began with no compass, GPS, or map. I climbed down from the camel and the sand swallowed my shoes as if were begging me to stay. We spent the next hour hiding in the tent as our tour guide dispensed with a massive black scorpion. When he told us to come out of the tent, we emerged into a black ocean. He instructed us to lay down a few feet from the tent so that we couldn't get lost in the abyss in front of us. I lost my love's hand after tripping in the sand, and we verbally resolved to lay down separately, as it was too dark to find each other even if we were inches away.

I was lying in the enveloping and terrifying supreme darkness when I thought my eyes began to trick me. I saw the silhouette of a dune, eclipsed by a dark purple light. Small specs of white slowly rose from the dune and eventually flooded the sky. The ground on which I laid was unable to be seen, but the sky was ablaze. In that moment, I felt a deeper loneliness that one feels when faced with an incomprehensible truth.

My thoughts were clear. My purpose was true in that moment. After being stripped of my phone, after being separated from the two people I came with, after looking with my own eyes, a sense of calm replaced the spot that loneliness just held in my soul moments ago.

I imagine this experience is similar to that of Thoreau's in the middle of the woods. He states in his most famous work "Walden" that, "Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime." (Thoreau 74, Par. 1). This was the truth. It was indescribable, it was intangible, it was beauty in its truest form. This is what Plato spoke of in his Theory of Forms. This was what Van Gogh tried to capture in his painting "Starry Night". This was transcendent of all of my mortal experiences to this point. For the first time since I was child, I was not consuming my surroundings and repackaging them for others to see. I was taking what was being offered from a higher plane of existence: an ecstatic experience of ethereal essence.

I didn't take a picture for the rest of the trip. I didn't need to.