Awe

Social scientists now tally up ten early traumas known as adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. Many of the men in blue are near a score of ten by the time they head to kindergarten, a vast fate that kicks the stress system into high gear, dampening prospects and shortening lives.

As the day progressed, I had the gnawing sense that awe—a focus of my talk that day—was irrelevant to the men in blue. It might even be an offense, the product of the myopia and tone-deafness of my white privilege. Of what matter is awe to people with life sentences, living twenty hours a day in a nine-by-twelve-foot cell?

Fifteen minutes into my talk, standing on a dais amid microphones and the amps of the church band, I asked:

What gives you guys awe?

And then I waited. After a second or two, here is what I heard:

My daughter

Visitors from the outside

Singing in the church band

The air

Jesus

My cellie

The light outside on the yard

Reading the Koran

Learning how to read

RJ at SQ

Today

The Wonders of Others

It is a myth that awe is rarefied, reserved for when we have enough wealth to enjoy lives of taste and “culture.” The responses of the men in blue tell us this is so. So too does recent empirical work. One study found that people who have less wealth report feeling more frequent awe during the day, and more wonder about their everyday surroundings. It is tempting to think that greater wealth enables us to find more awe, in the fancy home, for example, or exclusive resort, or high-end consumer goods. In fact, the opposite appears to be true, that 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. Our experience of awe does not depend on wealth; everyday awe is a basic human need.

In our daily diary studies in different countries, it was other people who were most likely to bring our participants everyday awe—actions of strangers, roommates, teachers, colleagues at work, people in the news, characters on podcasts, and our neighbors and family members. On rare occasions, disturbing acts did so, as in this story from a Spaniard:

It was in a metro station in Paris, France. It was about ten thirty p.m. We were alone at the station waiting for the train to arrive when a man arrived, swearing and screaming. He was saying something about God. I think he was sick, he took out a knife and he was punching everything he bumped into, and notching everything. We started running to get out of the metro, I don’t think I will get to the metro alone again.

And from Singapore, a story about being dumbfounded by the rise of authoritarian leaders:

When the results of the Philippines presidential elections were announced two days ago, I felt a sense of awe. The winner was this guy Duterte, who was linked to killer squads, asked to be the first to rape an Australian lady missionary who was indeed raped and killed in a prison riot, and threatened war with China! Such a man could win a presidential election??? What a man!!! Now this means that someone like Trump could be president of the United States!!! That would be awesome too because they both speak the same language. Tough talk that appeals to the most basest of human emotions. And they win!!!

We can be astonished by the depravity of fellow humans, both strangers we encounter and leaders in the public sphere, but these were rare sources of awe around the world.

Instead, over 95 percent of the moral beauty that stirred awe worldwide was in actions people took on behalf of others. Acts of courage are one kind of moral beauty with sublime potential. People using CPR to revive victims of heart attacks, parents raising children with serious health conditions, bystanders interrupting crimes or defusing fights, and organizations like Doctors Without Borders all inspire awe. Here is a story of lifesaving, courageous awe from Chile:

I remember it was a nice day and we decided to go fishing with my older brother and his friend of the same age, back then I was seventeen years old and my brother was almost twenty. We got plastic string that our neighbor let us borrow but with high regard so we take care of it. We went to San Pedro de la Paz, I do not remember if it was the big or small lagoon, the line got stuck meters into the lagoon. Our friend jumped into the water to free the nylon and started sinking so started yelling for help, my brother despite not being a good swimmer he jumped in to save him. The moment my friend felt my brother’s body, he clung to him by his waist so both of them started drowning by disappearing from the surface. I was freaking out yelling my brother’s name, Mariooo, Mariooo, Mariooo, but my voice will choke because I felt like crying. Out of nowhere, a man in a bathing suit came running, jumped into the water and saved both of them. It was a miracle that the person was there, he was a God-sent angel that saved my brother and my friend. We all finally returned home.