Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder

Wonder, the mental state of openness, questioning, curiosity, and embracing mystery, arises out of experiences of awe.

He outlined how emotions work: they shift our thought and action to enable us to adapt to our present circumstances.

sense of wonder so indestructible it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strengths.2 • RACHEL CARSON

For infants it is the immense warmth provided by parents, and when we die, the enormous expanse of our lives.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson), free intellectual exchange (Margaret Fuller), ordinary people in their daily lives (Walt Whitman), and mystical experiences found in religion, visions, and drugs (William James).53

wealth undermines everyday awe and our capacity to see the moral beauty in others, the wonders of nature, or the sublime in music or art.

Awe is the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand. Why

Awe is about our relation to the vast mysteries of life.

Why dying is oceanic and awe-filled for some and horrifying for others.