An Elevated Experience

The Words of Pastor, Rebecca Taylor

An advertisement for a vehicle manufacturing company promises “an elevated driving experience.” What does that mean? We’ve probably all seen trucks that have been jacked up, rolling along on ginormous tires… but that’s probably not what the vehicle company means by its promise. The word elevated is not to be taken literally but rather figuratively, evoking emotions of loftiness, superiority, euphoria. Isn’t that ultimately what all advertisers hope we will feel so that we desire the product touted?

What is it to have an elevated experience? There’s a common expression about walking or floating on air. There’s a movie, A Walk in the Clouds. There’s a book about Paul “Bear” Bryant titled, Above the Noise of the Crowd. And there’s that unpleasant encounter with another person who looks down on us making us feel very, very small… is that person having an elevated experience as if above all others?

The culture of this country breeds idolatry. Lifting up public figures like athletes and actors, the wealthy and the powerful, the physically attractive and the famous. Going beyond admiration. Exceeding adoration. Envying their lives. Putting them on a pedestal as if to be worshiped. It’s dangerous. Almost toxic. Something inside us gets hooked by this notion that we need to be more than we are and above where we are in life. We crave anything that affords us a “high” – perceived success, received acknowledgement, deceived insecurity. We long for whatever will create for us an elevated experience.

There are certainly great joys in this precarious enterprise called living. Genuine joy lifts our spirits and brightens our moods. And joy never seeks to destroy or defame others of our kind. On the contrary, joy is an effective elevator, infectiously seeking to connect and bind us together with a nod to the humanity we all share, rising above divisiveness and vitriol. Perhaps the truest elevated experiences are the ones which take us above meanness, beyond apathy, and into community.

Brené Brown begins her book Daring Greatly by quoting the source of its title, a speech delivered by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1910. He said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who spends himself in a worthy cause…” For any of us, for all of us, that describes an elevated experience!