Energy?

I've heard people talk about energy. Specifically, deriving energy from things, places, people I suppose. Emotions. Actions? I don't know what they mean, really, though I speculate, now and then, about it. Energy, to the engineer in me, has something to do with power, potential or expressed. It has do do with transformation, too. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with what others mean.

I know that I've places that have elated me (Santiago) or depressed me (Dachau), and that's a sort of power, or energy, that the place has. I think such places have an immediate effect (awe) and then a lingering effect, which might be some dilution of the experience, or perhaps even something created within us out of the experience, like conflict.

I think that some places have such a power to them. Most of the ones I can think of have a strong cultural meaning to them, and I wonder if they might have the same impact on someone from, say, China, as me. Of course, the places I'm thinking when I say that are more than locations. They are cities, or towns, or villages, and I think it is the humanity of the place that affects me. In particular, it is the art of the place, especially the architecture. Architecture seems to have an immediate ability to force the viewer to compare the space to something known, whether it is the interior of some gothic cathedral or a simple hut in India. Not that there is anything wrong with just accepting the beauty of a place, but when I see such places, I think of their age, the work that caused them to be created, the events that happened here. Perhaps buildings store up the power of events that made them. Or perhaps we analyize and give these places their power in respecting what they represent.

On the other hand, the natural world has its beauty, too. Seeing the Grand Canyon should affect anyone. It simply should, whether that reaction is disbelief, or amazement, or terror. Do we give these places their power? For some reason I am more certain that their power is universal - that anyone, from anywhere and anytime, would react to them.

Do we seek such places for their effect on us? Do we go to them expecting, demanding to be changed? Is the goal of the explorer to convince others to want to be changed? To be the first to be transformed by some new power?