Be Awestruck
Your relationships might thank you for it
Awe is that emotion we all have but don’t know how to talk about.
In a private moment, the first glimpse of the sun rising over a mountain peak can lift us out of ourselves, rendering us speechless in a timeless moment of transcendence.
If we turned to a companion and attempted to describe the moment, without a poetic turn of mind, the best we could come up with might be, “Wow.”
That particular sunrise, a daily occurrence, yet one that gave such a unique experience, remains difficult to articulate.
But reportage is not the purpose of awe. It is, like all other human emotions–anger, fear, joy, love–one of the myriad ways our experience of life flows through us. And science has begun to track the beneficial effects of our awe-inspired moments.
Awe first appeared on the scientific radar back in 2003, when researchers Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., of the University of California, Berkeley and Jonathan Haidt, Ph.D., then at the University of Virginia, and later, Melanie Rudd a Ph.D. candidate in the Business School at Stanford, gave awe some street cred.
They poked it, prodded it, and then wrote papers. No longer did we have to feel embarrassed if we teared up in front of our friends at the rainbow appearing after a summer rain shower or felt unable to speak at our first glimpse of one of the great oceans.
Science had declared it a good thing.
They needn’t have waited so long. I knew that when I was twelve years old. I’ll circle back to that.
The studies performed by a growing cohort in the field of psychology discovered that awe has a positive effect apart from the appreciation of nature, music or other triggering experience.
Awe alters the sense of time, gives a sense of well-being, and encourages a desire to help others.
Dacher and Jonathan described the process of experiencing awe as “accommodating.” The moment is so big, our thinking must expand beyond our normal boundaries to understand the experience.
Researchers have declared this to be very different from other emotions, those that may prompt us to take action in our lives.
Michelle “Lani” Shiota, Ph.D., of the SPLAT Lab at Arizona State University, has said, “Most positive emotions feel activating, they make you want to move…Awe slows us down physiologically. It actually reduces our fight-or-flight response and is physically soothing. Awe makes you focus on one thing, in a broad way, and put your attention fully on the experience.”
Dr. Rudd discovered that time slows down, a desire to help others increases, and an awe-inspired moment gives a feeling of well-being. It can correct negative behavior and shows physiological changes.
Can we also harm ourselves when we suppress awe? What price do we pay if we’re in a crowd and force ourselves not to go all teary-eyed at a sunset when the rest of the gang is cracking wise about finally seeing hotties in bikinis now that the beaches are finally open?
Or, you’re struck dumb by the beauty of your friend’s new baby but you turn away from the emotion because everyone else is holding their nose at the prospect of a few years of smelly diapers.
We lose so much when we don’t give ourselves over to the awestruck moment.
I think about how awe can influence relationships. I go back to one of my early memories when a sense of awe overtook me. At twelve-years-old, my mother had sent me on an errand that took me, in the early hours of a snowfall, along some fields with freshly fallen snow.
Seventy years later, I can vividly recall the physical and emotional sensations that left me awestruck. The snow had covered over what was usually an unremarkable Bronx neighborhood with vacant lots at the end of a series of streets. The snow had transformed them into a wonderland. At that late hour of the day, no cars had left tire tracks, no kids had beat me to the streets hooting their sleds or boots had made the first prints in the snow.
It was me and nature, the tiny bit we could carve out in our metropolitan New York. Overcome with nameless emotion, I ran home to my mother.
Though we had many things to recommend us, we were not an affectionate family. But when I burst into the kitchen, I couldn’t help myself. I threw my arms around my mother and told her I loved her.
It was the only way I could express the sence of wonder I’d had in the snow. While I was an exuberant child, such outbursts were common, I’m sure. But not the expression of love.
My mother hugged me back and smiled at me, but she didn’t know how to return my declaration of love. That would take many years. But I knew at that moment, from the light in her eyes, that she loved me back. And it was enough. That the inarticulate feelings I had in the snow were received.
In the years to come, I’ve had other moments of awe. I’ve been blessed at times to share them with others and thus experienced an unexpected sense of connectedness. These occurred with my daughter when she was both a child and an adult. In Antarctica with a close friend staring at glaciers and icebergs for the first time. With lovers who’ve looked at me in recognition of some beauty of nature that deepened our connection.
But I’ve also been with loved ones who have had their own moments of awe that I did not experience. Sometimes a sunrise is just a sunrise, not a life-altering event. Nevertheless, I was the beneficiary of their miraculous event, in the way that my mother was that day long ago, of the spillover of goodwill and joy that filled them up, and it brought us closer.
Scientists researching awe show videos of nature to study subjects to induce awe-inspiring moments. But awe is not a button we can locate behind our ear, one to flick on and off when we need a jolt of uplift.
The beauty of awe is in the unexpected. It is a moment of serendipity. Closing the umbrella and looking up to see the rainbow appear in the sky. I don’t know if those subjects experienced true awe from looking at a video. I suppose it’s worth a try.
I do know that in all the reading I’ve done throughout my life on what makes relationships work, nobody has mentioned awe as a glue that can cement a bond between people. Perhaps that’s because we understand awe as a solitary experience.
But suppose we become more aware of the potential of awestruck moments? Suppose we resist making light of them if others speak of them?
My mother didn’t know what prompted my burst of affection that day, though she recognized something important had happened because it was so out of character. She had the wisdom to accept it.
But suppose she had not? She could have crushed an important experience for me. Let’s not be that kind of person. You know the kind I mean.
Perhaps we can think about putting ourselves in the path of grace as means of enhancing our relationships? We can’t appreciate the rainbow if we don’t look for it.
A sense of awe happens in the blink of an eye, but its effects can last a lifetime. If it moves people closer together, to be kinder, to show more love, well, that’s awe-inspiring.