What is “awe” and where can we discover those feelings of transcendence? in Daydreaming on the Porch

What gives you a sense of awe? That word, awe—the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world—is often associated with the extraordinary. You might imagine standing next to a 350-foot-tall tree or on a wide-open plain with a storm approaching, or hearing an electric guitar fill the space of an arena, or holding the tiny finger of a newborn baby. Awe blows us away: It reminds us that there are forces bigger than ourselves, and it reveals that our current knowledge is not up to the task of making sense of what we have encountered.

These words in a recent essay by Dascher Keltner really resonated with me. I have on quite a few occasions experienced what I would call “awe.” These are some things that come to mind: An earth-shaking clap of thunder and lightning; a mind-blowingly beautiful sunset that begins in the darkening sky with delicate, pastel shades of pink or yellow, then slowly expands into a fiery blaze of orange and red that literally stops you in your tracks; and at last coming upon a waterfall that you’ve heard faintly in the near distance, only to be presented with an astounding fan of water sliding or dropping over a rocky stream that has tumbled down into a tiny valley from on high.

I’ve seen the classic sites of natural awe and wonder such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite Falls, Crater Lake and Yellowstone National Park. But they’re all far “Out West,” thousands of miles from where I live. It’s been more than 30 years since I’ve seen them.

However, close to home I can experience mighty thunderstorms and glorious sunsets at three easy-to-get-to vantage points overlooking a wide and expansive harbor, and tidal river open to the sky. Majestic. If I really want to I can drive several hours to the Blue Ridge Mountains and see some of my favorite waterfalls. All doable and accessible.

What we used to call awe-inspiring a quite serviceable term, has been replaced by a younger generation calling anything cool “awesome.” Yes, a sunset in it’s final moments is “awesome” but it’s better to describe it as “awe-inspiring” because they term always describes something that inspires a deep and reverential feeling of awe. Most everything can be awesome,but many fewer can be called awe-inspiring.

To illustrate my point, Keltner goes on to talk about awe thusly:

…But you don’t need remarkable circumstances to encounter awe. When my colleagues and I asked research participants to track experiences of awe in a daily diary, we found, to our surprise, that people felt it a bit more than two times a week on average. And they found it in the ordinary: a friend’s generosity, a leafy tree’s play of light and shadow on a sidewalk, a song that transported them back to a first love…

That’s exactly right. That’s how most of us experience awe. For example, there are times when I’m out walking at the state park or Magnolia Gardens in winter and spot a single camellia that is so perfectly formed,and in such an eye-popping state of natural grace and beauty, that not only do I have to photograph it, but I feel compelled to look deeply at the structure and arrangement of this most magical creation. Awe is what I feel then, and gratitude. The same feelings rush through me when looking closely at the first brilliant yellow daffodils in February or azalea blooms in March when they are backlit by the sun to reveal thousands of tiny crystal-like points of light, as if they were made for that light to illuminate them at just those times.

These natural spectacles of flowering azaleas and camellias in Spring and Winter are temporal wonders, but that is what also makes them so special and magical — the fact that they are so fleeting and their beauty so ethereal for a brief whisper of time, but providing enough of a window of opportunity to thoroughly experience and appreciate their full awesomeness.

Everyday scenes of awe and wonder:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/5j9T2U75LC