Desperate for a profound experience, almost missed it.

Don't get bamboozled.

We left our dinners behind and dashed outside with the other hotel guests to see the dazzling red and green hues sparkle against a canvas of shining stars — and to have one of those moments that would leave us forever changed, because that’s what happens once you see nature’s ability to flex its beauty like it’s strutting down a runway, it’s impossible not to feel a little more religious. So we were told.

It took, to reach Iceland, a sleepless red-eye that crooked our spines, and a reckless drive down a rugged coast that in retrospect seems like a miracle we made it — it was pitch black, and we were shot at by a flurry of rain and wind so intense that I had to steer against it for fear of being thrown into whatever dark depths existed or didn’t exist to the side of the highway. Couldn’t see a goddamn thing.

And now was the moment we’d traveled all this way, to see the Northern Lights. Each breath we took standing in the freezing parking lot was like swallowing a hornet, but the cold was to be dealt with, a small price to pay. Again, so we were told!

We looked up and out and the other way and there were a lot of stars — I could see all of them that ever existed — until finally we were pointed towards a strip of gray that looked like a rectangle of smoke extending across the horizon.

Huh.

The guests were gaping and gasping. I stared harder, maybe I could see some color? I tried to feel harder too, desperate for something profound to swell inside of me. Was this a wondrous event in mine and my wife’s life that we’d talk about for the rest of our time?

Then, I saw all these screens lit up around me. In real life, the shit was gray. But through the phone? Crazy beautiful green rays, like dregs on a wine glass dripping down from the sky. But only on the phone. Not with my eyes… The eyes that God gave me. Only the eyes of Steve Jobs got to see this beauty.

We went back inside to our dinner. The rest of the diners also shuffled in. My soup was cold. My wife sat across from me. I said, that was cool, because I was still desperately trying to feel what everyone else was feeling. That was really cool, I emphasized.

It was a few minutes later that the maitre’d returned dinging his glass, and informed us that the lights were really putting on a show. I heard someone ask, are they dancing? I wasn’t going to go look. But then I was sitting by myself with peoples’ napkins tossed onto their tables and chairs scooted out and a broken glass on the ground because there was such a hurry, and I felt particularly lame.

I zipped up my jacket, shrunk my head deep into my collar, and shuffled outside to join the other tourists that’d been bamboozled by Iceland’s tourism center.

And then I saw this.

And this:

Yeah. It was awesome. So awesome that I thought if there was ever a time to ask the universe for something, it was now. Some sort of magic was happening here, right?

So I wished for world peace, of course ;)