The Sublime: From Cathedrals to Control

There’s a certain feeling I chase—not often, but I know it when it hits. It’s that moment when you walk into a space and all the noise in your head falls silent. Not because the space is peaceful, but because it’s bigger than you—older, stranger, built for something beyond your understanding. You don’t just look around. You look up. You feel small, but not diminished. You feel like you’ve stepped into something sacred, whether or not you believe in sacred things.

I felt that today standing in Liverpool Cathedral. Gothic arches towering overhead, silence thick enough to feel physical. Light pouring in like revelation through stained glass. It didn’t ask me to admire it. It didn’t ask anything. It just was. And I had to reckon with that.

I’ve felt that same thing in a game before—Control, of all things. The moment I walked into the Federal Bureau of Control’s stark, monolithic lobby, I felt it. Brutalist walls, endless corridors, sharp lines swallowing light. Ray tracing made it too real—reflections bouncing where my eye wasn’t even looking. It was beautiful in a way that didn’t comfort me. It was unknowable, and yet it was mine to navigate. The building didn’t want me there, but I was already inside. And somehow, it was up to me to make sense of it.

That’s what the sublime is, I think—what Burke was trying to name. Not just beauty, but awe with teeth. Vastness, mystery, and power that doesn’t beg for your appreciation. It simply exists. You either rise to meet it or retreat.

It’s the feeling of being humbled and charged at the same time.

I’ve felt it in:

• The silence before the boss fight in Pontiff Sulyvahn’s cathedral in Dark Souls III
  
• The blinding white of the Heptapod ship in Arrival
• The slow piano and endless dunes of Journey
• The echoing emptiness of a museum atrium when you're the first one inside

These spaces don’t just wow you—they reframe you. They make you ask: What am I in relation to this? What matters? What’s mine to carry?

And strangely, they help me at work, too. When I feel ego creeping in, when I get caught in debates or tangled in the need to be right, I remember how small I am in a cathedral. I remember what it feels like to walk into the unknown and know the task is not to conquer it, but to understand just enough to move forward.

The sublime reminds me: not every hill is sacred. But some are. Know the difference. And step lightly through both.