“Something happens when you dive into a world where clocks don’t tick and inboxes don’t ping. As your arms circle, swing and pull along the edge of a vast ocean, your mind wanders, and you open yourself to awe, to the experience of seeing something astonishing, unfathomable or greater than yourself.” Julia Baird, Phosphorescence, p23
It wasn’t until I read Julia Baird’s bestselling
biography/meditation on photoluminescence, that I really reflected on awe. What
is awesome? What generates awe within us?
According to Jonah Paquette, author of Awestruck: How
embracing wonder can make you happier, healthier and more connected, awe is
a feeling of perceptual or conceptual vastness, combined with experience that
transcends our understanding, and forces us to accommodate new information from
a different, perhaps bigger, perspective.
Emerging research on awe shows that it makes us feel less
alone, diminishing the ego and giving us a sense of the greater forces that
surround us.
Awe can be negative – its origins relate to fright or
terror, particularly in relation to a divine being – or positive. That negative
type of awe can be a powerful driver for change, and even ethical conduct. Awestruck
focuses more on positive awe.
Research has shown that awe makes us kinder, more generous,
and more curious about the world. Studies have shown that awe has a number of
psychological benefits, including increasing satisfaction, making us less
materialistic, reducing stress, helping us grow and change and making us more
humble.
At a biological level in humans, awe may be associated with
reduced levels of inflammatory interleukins – could it have an
anti-inflammatory effect?
If all this is true, that seems a good reason to cultivate awe, which is what the second half of Awestruck is devoted to.
First, it is helpful to understand the many forces that can
blunt or crush awe: anxiety, multi-tasking, addictive technology, habits,
routine, desensitisation…the same forces that nibble away at our wellbeing.
Paquette discusses strategies to minimise the awe-crushers,
for example limiting exposure to addictive technology.
But he and Baird also talk about strategies to deliberately
seek out awe: for example, disrupting our habitual existence, doing small
things differently, and being mindful of the world around us.
There are so many
potential sources of awe, but a strong theme emerges from both Awestruck
and Phosphorescence: one of the most common and powerful sources of
awe is the natural world.
And that is probably what resonates with me the most. When I think about awesome experiences, the common factor is animal life. Whether its hearing the exquisite soft snoring of a cat in a deep sleep, or observing a horse grazing in a paddock, animals are a constant source of awe. Neither of these books are written with a veterinary audience in mind, but when I talk to friends and colleagues about what drove us into the profession, and what sustains it, there is often a sense of awe.
These books provide compelling arguments for seeking and
cultivating awe, and provide some -practical suggestions about how to do so.
Awe-chasing seems like a very valuable use of one’s time.
They also provide compelling reasons for protecting these
sources of awe, most of which are threatened by our unsustainable lifestyles.