Awe is a type of emotion that has many affable qualities. Dacher Keltner’s book Awe talks about the role of awe in our lives and how it can inspire creativity, bring down stress and help us lead the good life. It lists down 8 simple ways we can find awe in our daily life.
The cool thing about awe
The most common definition of Awe is the feeling of vastness that we experience when we encounter something that is bigger than us. Music, art, religion, nature, sports are some common conduits of awe. It is usually felt in the presence of something vast that transcends our current understanding of the world. Vastness can be physical, temporal, semantic, about ideas, challenging, destablising, etc.
Awe is contextual. Where we come from affects how we experience awe. For example, how we conceptualise virtue based on our upbriging, cultural experience, religious beliefs, etc affects how we experience moral beauty which in turn affects how we experience awe. Cultural preferences can also affect how we feel awe. Hierarchical cultures like Japan, experience awe in front of an inspiring personality with some element of fear. Cultures and religions that don’t believe in a judgemental God philosophy, experience bliss in encounter with the divine.
Experiencing awe, for example by looking at the skeleton of a T Rex, helps quite down our hyper individualistic self and opens us for collaboration. Our default mode network or DMN - the part of our brain network that is associated with the excesses of our ego, is known quiten down when in presence of something vast. It also helps us make peace with the fact that we are not a 100% control of our lives.
Awe can also amplify our thinking faculties. Einstein is said to have been awe struck by rainbows and much of the work around refraction and perception was triggered by it.
8 ways you can welcome awe into your life
The author calls this section 8 wonders of life. Here are the 8 ways you can experience awe in your life.
- Moral beauty - Watching, experiencing or reading about other people’s acts of courage, justice, generosity, etc
- Collective effervescence - moving in unison or participating in shared attention. It is the force people feel when in a collective (sporting events, dance classes, rituals and ceremonies)
- Nature - hikes, spending time in the wild, rock climbing, rafting, etc. merely listening to flowing water is known to improve our attention and provide better ability to discern between urgent and important matters.
- Music - specific musical notes make us feel specific emotions and these emotions are universally similar across cultures. if you like listening to music, you can easily get your daily dose of awe from it.
- Visual design - paintings, buildings, machines, etc. Appreciating actual contours of the geometry can incite certain feelings in us. In visual design, we like familiarity of form and design and it makes us feel comforted.
- Spiritual or religious stories - there are over 4200 active religions in the world today and the mystical awe that originates from it can cause feelings of “vanishing self” or “ego death” that bring awe and are known to make us more curious, creative and altruistic.
- Stories of life and death - thinking about or experiencing birth or death of a close one, can cause us to appreciate the ephemeral nature of life and leave us awestruck.
- Epiphanies - sudden understandings of truths about life. when systems thinking exposes us how the world around us works, awe overtakes us (think Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos)
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