Today I Choose to be Rapturous – How to be Rapturous

How to Find Awe in Both Vastness and Kindness

Standing at the edge of Garden of the Gods on that crisp Saturday afternoon, I felt my breath catch in my throat. The towering red sandstone formations stretched before me like ancient cathedrals, their weathered faces telling stories of geological time I could barely comprehend. This was rapture in its purest form – not the manufactured joy we’re told to chase, but something deeper, more primal. Something that happens when we stand small before the infinite.

Everything you’ve been told about how to be rapturous might be backwards. We’re taught to seek it in achievement, in acquisition, in the endless pursuit of more. But here, gazing out over these monuments to time itself, I understood that true rapture often comes from standing still long enough to let wonder find us.

The Science of Geological Awe

As I tried to wrap my mind around how these formations came to pass – millions of years of pressure, wind, water, and time working their patient magic – I felt that familiar sensation of cognitive overwhelm that paradoxically brings peace. Researchers call this “geological time perspective,” and it has a profound effect on our stress levels and sense of meaning.

The red rocks before me weren’t just beautiful; they were teachers. Each layer represented eons of earth’s history, each formation a testament to forces so vast they rendered my daily worries beautifully insignificant. This is what rapture looks like when it emerges from vastness – not diminishment, but proper perspective.

For women over 50, this type of awe becomes especially profound. We’ve lived long enough to understand time’s passage in our own lives, making geological time both more mysterious and more meaningful. Standing there, I felt connected to something larger than myself, larger than my generation, larger than human memory itself.

A Different Kind of Rapture

But rapture, I’ve discovered, doesn’t only come from the vast and ancient. The prior year, visiting Rock City, I experienced an entirely different species of ecstasy. Yes, the rock formations were stunning – nature’s artistry on full display. But what filled me up, what created that bubbling sense of transcendent joy, was the human story behind it.

Learning about the family who created this slice of heaven, who spent their resources and energy crafting beauty for strangers to enjoy – that generosity just filled me up. Here was rapture born not from geological time but from human kindness, not from forces of nature but from forces of love.

The contrast struck me immediately. At Garden of the Gods, I felt rapturous in the face of nature’s raw power and time’s incomprehensible scale. At Rock City, I felt equally rapturous witnessing human beings choosing to create beauty for others, choosing generosity over self-interest, choosing to leave the world more wonderful than they found it.

The Saturday Afternoon Truth About Wonder

Both experiences taught me something essential about how to be rapturous after 50: it requires a kind of radical openness. Not the desperate searching we often mistake for spiritual seeking, but a willingness to be stopped in our tracks by both the magnitude of the universe and the magnificence of human hearts.

This isn’t the manufactured bliss sold in wellness magazines. This is the real thing – that moment when something breaks through our carefully constructed daily reality and reminds us that we’re part of something extraordinary. Whether it’s standing before ancient rock formations or witnessing acts of human generosity, rapture emerges when we’re present enough to recognize mystery in its many forms.

Creating Space for Transcendence

The journey to becoming rapturous after 50 often begins with this recognition: we don’t create these moments so much as create space for them. At Garden of the Gods, I had to stop scrolling through my phone, stop mentally rehearsing my to-do list, stop the constant chatter of productivity culture long enough to actually see what was in front of me.

At Rock City, I had to pause my cynical adult brain long enough to let myself be moved by other people’s kindness. In our age of skepticism and independence, allowing ourselves to be filled up by generosity requires its own kind of courage.

This is what distinguishes genuine rapture from its counterfeits. Real transcendence often requires us to surrender our illusion of control, to acknowledge our smallness in the face of forces – natural or human – that operate on scales we can barely comprehend.

The Intimacy of Geological Time

What surprised me most about both experiences was how intimate they felt. Standing before those ancient formations, I wasn’t diminished by the vastness but somehow connected to it. The same carbon in my body had cycled through countless forms over those millions of years. I was part of the story those rocks were telling.

Similarly, witnessing the generosity behind Rock City didn’t make me feel separate from that kindness but connected to the human capacity for creating beauty. Their gift became my gift became everyone’s gift – a reminder that rapture, at its core, is about recognizing our interconnectedness with both the cosmic and the intimate.

Beyond the Pursuit of Joy

After years of trying the conventional approach to happiness, I’ve learned that rapture isn’t something we achieve through effort. It’s something we allow through attention. It emerges when we’re present enough to recognize that we’re already part of something magnificent – whether that’s the geological story of our planet or the ongoing human story of choosing love over fear.

For women navigating the complexities of life after 50, this understanding becomes particularly liberating. We’re no longer required to manufacture our own bliss or optimize our way to enlightenment. Instead, we can simply show up with open hearts to the wonder that’s already everywhere around us.

The Practice of Wonder

This doesn’t mean passive waiting for lightning strikes of transcendence. It means cultivating the kind of attention that recognizes rapture when it appears. It means visiting places like Garden of the Gods not for the Instagram photo but for the possibility of being genuinely moved. It means listening to stories like the one behind Rock City with enough openness to let someone else’s generosity touch our hearts.

It means understanding that rapture requires both vulnerability and discernment – the willingness to be affected by beauty and the wisdom to recognize it in all its forms. Sometimes it looks like ancient rock formations carved by wind and time. Sometimes it looks like people choosing to create beauty for strangers.

Today I Choose Openness

Today, I choose to be rapturous by choosing openness to both the vast and the intimate. I choose to see the extraordinary in geological time and in human kindness. I choose to let myself be moved by forces larger than my understanding and by gestures smaller than headlines but no less transformative.

This is how we become rapturous after 50: not through the frantic pursuit of peak experiences, but through the patient cultivation of attention. Not through forcing joy, but through creating space for awe. Not through conquering wonder, but through surrendering to it.

The rocks at Garden of the Gods will outlast me by millions of years. The kindness witnessed at Rock City will ripple forward in ways I’ll never know. But standing in the presence of both, allowing myself to be genuinely moved by what I cannot fully comprehend, I understand that rapture isn’t a destination to reach but a capacity to develop.

And in a world that often feels overwhelming in all the wrong ways, this kind of beautiful overwhelm – the awe that comes from recognizing our place in something magnificent – might be exactly what we need to remember what it means to be fully alive.