What is awe? And can experiencing awe lead to a happier, healthier life? Henry Wismayer spends time with Dacher Keltner, a Berkeley psychology professor at the forefront of a scientific movement examining our least-understood emotional state. Iโve appreciated Wismayerโs contemplative essays on other subjects, especially travel and tourism, and this profile-reported essay hybrid is yet another thought-provoking read. Itโs informative but not dense, and I came away from it fresh, open-minded, and ready to experience the dayโs small wonders.
Out of this trove of 2,600 personal narratives, the team at Berkeley distilled a definitive catalogue of aweโs elicitors. Keltner dubbed them โthe eight wonders of life.โ The most common source of awe was the moral beauty of other people, such as witnessing instances of compassion or courage. Also prevalent was โcollective effervescence,โ the sense of transcendent unity we might feel at a sporting event or when dancing in unison with others. Then came two predictable ones: nature and music, to which was added a third aesthetic stimulus, visual design. The last three could be lumped together by those of a romantic disposition as matters of the soul: spiritual awe, life and death, and epiphanies, like Archimedesโ Eureka moment, or the Damascene conversion of St. Paul.