Ambedo, a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details.

Raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee.

Ambedo, briefly soaking in the experience of being alive, an act that is done purely for its own sake.

It is a moment, or a time of refreshment, re-invigoration, even regeneration. It is almost like you are being pulled back to a realization and a focus that you deeply need, but that you have drifted away from.

The suddenness of the rapture jerks you out of the everydayness of your ordinary sensibilities, and reminds you of the strange and mystical joy of being alive.

It makes you wonder how you ever let this experience, this realization, this perspective, wane in the first place. It should be a constant, grounding sensibility underlying each of your waking moments.

There should be a ‘Wow’ underneath and around everything. It is all about keeping the cosmic wonder alive.

It should be the air you breathe, the ground you walk on, the magic you take in every second of every day.

It will make everything better and easier – the choices, the challenges, the opportunities and difficulties.

There is magic and wonder in everything. You can not consider the biggest cosmic and metaphysical truths without realizing this.

But to feel it, to sense it, and to live with the realization every day is not a substitute for a sense of meaning, but the only way to get a true fix on the deep and rich meaning there is to be found.

Ambedo: The search for meaning is a search for missing treasure.

You’ve never actually seen it, but you’ve heard stories since you were a kid. It might have been something you lost, years ago. But ever since then, you can’t help but keep your eyes open. As if the answer will arrive in some windfall epiphany.

That hunger stays with you as you grow up, though you’re not so sure you’re on the right track. Too many people make a mess of their own treasure maps, scribbled over with roadblocks and detours, but they’re still asking around for a shortcut.

You start to think you can feel it getting closer, that you can read the currents of everyday life, and notice something hidden just beneath the surface. But you find the deeper you try to dive into life, the more time you spend in the shallows. You just end up back on the shore, trying to go deeper again.

The best you can hope for is to see where the road takes you, to let your mind wander, and enjoy the ride. To find those moments when everything falls quiet, and the words lose their meaning, and it all mixes together – until you can’t tell the difference between the ordinary and the epic.

And you stop waiting around for some other meaning to arrive. You notice how delicate and fleeting it all seems. Everything struggling just to exist. And you too are a guest on this Earth, whose life is not just a quest, or an opportunity, or a story to tell. It’s also just an experience, that exists for its own sake. It’s okay to linger in the shallows, and take it all in.

But even that won’t bring you any closer to what you’re looking for. It’s easy to find, but impossible to hold onto.