Wonder and awe everyday
Take a look at this photo:
You were not there. You did not get to experience the flowing river, the blue sky with those puffy clouds, the gentle breeze, the woodpecker in the tree, … I could have been there for a much longer time, if not for the cold wind that started blowing, bringing along dark clouds in the sky that covered up all the wonderful blue. You missed it all because you were not there.
There’s plenty that we don’t get to see, hear, and experience what another person would have. We know that. No blogger needs to point out this fact of life. We know that really well.
Yet, here I am 😁
That preface was to set the context for the solar eclipse that has been hyped everywhere. NPR suggests “5 fun ways to bring wonder and awe into your life” … if you can't make it to this awe-inducing, otherworldly, once-in-a-blue-moon solar event”. Check it out; I don’t want to spoil your fun ;)
I suppose one could watch a solar eclipse for many reasons. One might do that in order to boast, “I was there”. To take a few selfies and post them on Insta or Facebook.
But a mere performative attendance is not what wonder and awe are about.
Scientists say that if we paused at “awe” moments, we would then find happiness and contentment. I tracked down one of the many reports that I have come across recently on how feeling awed contributes to one’s health; this is from the NYT more than a year ago:
Awe can mean many things. It can be witnessing a total solar eclipse. Or seeing your child take her first steps. Or hearing Lizzo perform live. But, while many of us know it when we feel it, awe is not easy to define.
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world,” said Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Isn’t it interesting that a solar eclipse is the first example right there!
In his book, Dr. Keltner writes that awe is critical to our well-being — just like joy, contentment and love. His research suggests it has tremendous health benefits that include calming down our nervous system and triggering the release of oxytocin, the “love” hormone that promotes trust and bonding.
Intuitively, I came to understand that when I am “lost” in those moments, I am not thinking about myself. Research echoes that with evidence, as the NYT report notes:
Sharon Salzberg, a leading mindfulness teacher and author, also sees awe as a vehicle to quiet our inner critic. Awe, she believes, is “the absence of self-preoccupation.”
This, Dr. Keltner said, is especially critical in the age of social media. “We are at this cultural moment of narcissism and self-shame and criticism and entitlement; awe gets us out of that,” Dr. Keltner said. It does this by helping us get out of our own heads and “realize our place in the larger context, our communities,” he explained.
A sense of awe might also decrease our materialistic motivations, says the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley:
According to the researchers, the answer may lie in the self-transcendence that awe can inspire. “People in awe start to appreciate their sense of selfhood as less separate and more interrelated to the larger existence,” they write. “The experience of awe elevates people from their mundane concerns, which are bounded by daily experiences such as the desire for money.”
Further evidence for this idea comes from a recent study, suggesting that awe can function as a buffer against negative emotion when you lose material possessions. After time spent marveling at the world around you, misplacing your new sunglasses might not feel so bad.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? There are much, much more awesome, grander, things all around us, which minimize the importance of mundane material possessions.
I distinctly remember this from my very early months in Oregon when one morning on my drive to campus I saw two deer by the roadside. When they spotted my vehicle, they stopped grazing. Their eyes were focused on me. I stopped by the side of the road. I was looking at them looking at me. We looked at each other like that for perhaps three, maybe four minutes. Neither the deer nor I moved. And then it struck me: Unlike the deer, I had work to do, classes to teach.
As I entered the building, I ran into the dean, Jim. He and I had traded quite a few emails regarding my pay after he offered me the job on behalf of the department and the university. I could not believe the low, low salary that I was offered and turned down the job offer for that reason. Jim and the faculty explored every possible loophole in the rigid pay structure that the union had bargained for, and came back to me a third time with a final offer, which meant that I would still take a 20 percent pay cut. I did. I knew that Jim too would not have forgotten all that back-and-forth.
That morning, I told Jim about how if not for the classes I might have spent more time watching the deer. I added that it made up a little bit for the pay cut that I took to move to Oregon.
In a completely different context that has nothing to do with the solar eclipse, Souvankham Thammavongsa says this when discussing her very short story in The New Yorker:
Wonder and awe are so lovely and so difficult to hold on to when you get older. It’s easy to close those things off.
I suppose a key to enjoying one’s life for the longest time is to experience wonder and awe even as we age. We may not travel far and wide as eclipse chasers, we may not hike the Himalayas, but, like beauty, wonder and awe are in the eyes of the beholder.
May your life be full of wonder and awe!