Awe is awesome

and I wonder how our movements would change with more of it

Dear Soulful Revolutionaries,

I recently heard psychologist Dacher Keltner interviewed by Krista Tippett about his research on awe. And friends, it was awesome. (Sorry, it was right there — I couldn’t help it!) Since hearing him speak, I’ve been pondering the role of awe in soulful revolution.

Keltner’s book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, draws from his work at the Greater Good Science Center in Berkeley, California. Having studied and taught the science of happiness for 20-plus years, Keltner concludes, “I have an answer: FIND AWE.”

According to Keltner, “Awe is almost always nearby, and is a pathway to healing and growing in the face of the losses and traumas that are part of life.”

Keltner’s research has shown awe to be as close to us as our own hearts. Awe is activated in our bodies through the vagus nerve, a bundle of nerves which begins at the top of the spinal cord and stretches down into the gut. When we experience awe, the vagus nerve causes our heart rate to slow and our breathing to deepen. It leaves us with eyes wide and mouth agape. It even reduces negative self talk. Awe “orients you to be open to the world and to other people,” Keltner told Tippett.

While awe is often associated with breathtaking natural beauty, this is just one of the “Eight Wonders of Life” Keltner names that inspire awe in the human species. In fact, awe is activated most powerfully by:

1. Bearing witness to acts of human compassion, courage, and overcoming obstacles, or what Keltner calls moral beauty.

2. Moving together with others. Keltner talks about dance and sports, but I would add mass protest as a quintessential example of what Keltner delightfully terms collective effervescence.

I’m caught on this idea of awe as a response to humanity at our best, moving together. When we join together in action for the good of others — and the generations that will come after us — we have the opportunity to discover something greater than ourselves. This is a spiritual experience as much as a social one. This “greater than I” experience alters our brain chemistry. Awe comes over us as we are pulled out of our sense of smallness into communal movement.

It is from this vantage point that we see the true scale of social change, recognizing how very small we are by comparison to the work that needs to be done, and the scope of the movements that are doing it. The collective effort is a wonder— all of the people, skills, gifts, resources that are required for something to change.

And, awe is fractal. When we can behold the whole, worldwide, multigenerational movement for the healing of the world with wonder, we can bring that same vision to our own smaller circle of the movement, and subsequently to the unique contribution of each good ancestor, each comrade, each future activist whom we will never meet. All of us together building an awesome movement for the greater good.

What if awe — especially springing from collective effervescence and moral beauty — served as a key indicator of the health of our movements? That is, what if our movements were measured by their capacity to generate awe in participants because of the strategic synchronization and creative excellence with which we move together? What if we considered an action a success based on the awe of witnesses, beholding demonstrations of courage and compassion? Wouldn’t our movements be healthier, more sustainable, more honoring of the humanity of those within and outside of them, if awe were a common practice and shared aspiration?

Awe is a powerful connective tissue between our individual experiences of change and those we seek to create collectively. This is a gift that must be wisely tended and nurtured.

After all, awe is a powerful emotion, and history is full of examples of awe being exploited in divisive and violent ways. Dictators and autocrats the world over have played on the human propensity to be wowed in order to further their dehumanizing, oppressive agendas. Awe and fear are closely related, and if we’re not careful, we can confuse the two experiences. Keltner quotes environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams as saying, “the difference between fear and awe is a matter of our eyes adjusting.” If we wish to be formed as soulful revolutionaries, it’s up to us to orient our awe toward justice, healing, and love.

It is often said that what we pay attention to grows. We can grow strong “awe muscles” as individuals and communities by turning our attention to what is beautiful, just, and compassionate. Practicing awe in one area prepares us for an awe-filled response in another.

I wonder, for example, if we would be better prepared to engage in courageous acts of community mobilization if we were well-practiced in watching sunsets. Maybe we would bear wide-eyed witness to a community member’s struggles to stay sober if we have also stood in awe of a loved one undergoing their own recovery journey. Perhaps we would find rapturous joy in a new piece of music, having known the songs of ordinary people marching and singing together for the sake of extraordinary things.

Cultivating awe in the small ordinary moments of our lives grows our capacity to courageously face the big things that frighten us. Everyday awe builds our awareness of belonging to a collective — a community of soulful revolutionaries that together is doing wondrous, awesome things.

What inspires awe in you? What is an awesome experience that changed you? Does your practice of awe connect you with a wider community of changemakers?