Happy Friday from the road! We’re both headed off on adventures today and I can tell by our exclamation laden texts that we’re feeling full, happy, and content with how our days are being spent lately.
Kate’s off to the Lake Tahoe area and I’m headed to Bend, Oregon for the first time. I’m amped to explore a new city, but also terrified of falling in love with yet another place. Oh the struggle.
Whatever you do this weekend, wherever you’re headed, whether it’s down the block or across the state, try to squeeze a few moments of awe in. If you follow us on instagram then you probably saw my post yesterday, but just to reiterate :
Explore the spaces that make you feel small. Awe is considered one of the core positive emotions. Chillin’ in the same realm as compassion, love, amusement, joy, contentment, and pride, but until recently there was very little scientific investigation of this thing called awe.
There are degrees of awe, but think of those moments when something blows your damn mind. Maybe it’s watching a crazy snowboarding jump or standing on rock cliffs at the edge of the ocean. Life shifting jolts. Awe-triggering events. Whatever you call them, these experiences are proven to alter us temporarily at the very least, but maybe they change your perspective permanently.
Awe is a unique emotion that transforms us from self-focus to collective interest. Awe causes us to reinforce social connections and makes us more generous, but not only that, it literally keeps us healthy. It’s evolutionarily adaptive to reach out, to connect when we are faced with forces we don’t totally understand, good or bad. It’s how we’re all here today. We work together, awe wants to be shared, it has to be because even if it’s vast and beautiful, it scares us a little bit too. Awe is slightly (or wholly) overwhelming and because of that it has the power to unite a community toward common goals. Think of the entire global community after a large earthquake or tsunami.
By connecting us to the collective interest, awe also backhandedly lowers inflammation and stress. Basically (and very basically because explaining it all would go over the Instagram caption word count) researchers took saliva samples from subjects and measured a marker for inflammation known as cytokine IL-6. This marker acts as a 911 call to fight illness and heal wounds. Think low levels healthy and good, high levels depression, stress, and therefor bad. Of all the positive emotions: joy, compassion, love, pride, etc, experiencing awe was the only one that predicted significantly lower levels of IL-6. The only one. Awe freaking matters.
It’s no wonder we seek out nature. It doesn’t matter what science says, it’s how we feel. Inject some awe into your lives. Heal yourself.
If you’re curious about this you can google ‘Keltner UC Berkeley Awe studies’ or read the book The Nature Fix, which is where I originally read about these studies on awe.