Merriam-Webster defines awe as “an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime.”
Wow. All this time, I thought awe was strictly based on feelings of wonderment. And so this is how I choose to define the term. Perhaps other individuals and institutions agree with me. Case in point: According to the Greater Good Science Center in Berkeley, California, “The latest research suggests that taking the time to experience awe—whether through engaging with nature, enjoying great art or music, or even bingeing on breathtaking YouTube videos—may be a pathway to improving your life and relationships.”
But I think there are far more profound and yet everyday ways to experience awe and boost our thoughts and emotions, simply by focusing our attention on so much of what we take for granted. For example:
How Did We Get Here? Consider the miracle that I wrote this and you are reading this. How did we humans actually ended up on Earth, the only habitable planet we know of, with our lives made possible from ancestral links dating back 100,000 to 200,000 years? Many of us, myself included, may have our health issues, but for now, and I mean right NOW in this moment, here we are, spinning in space on a rapidly moving tiny blue orb. Stop reading this for a second, and take a few focused deep breaths. This alone – the fact we are here right now – is virtually unfathomable.
What are the Various Systems and Linkages Nature Provides to Support Human Life? Yes, I know I can (should have already?) learned this in high school and college. For one, I didn’t. And secondly, I believe folks who study this would arguably hold even more awe. Think about our oxygen supply, water supply, and how plants perform photosynthesis, to name just a few factors.
How Do The Systems Comprising Humans Work As Well As They Do? We need not talk about religion or Darwinism here. Simply consider a human like she/he is a device – a brand new iPhone, for example. Just look at the mechanics. As an iPhone, my feature set includes breathing, circulating blood, growing new cells, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, lifting and lowering my arms, walking, running, eating, procreating, digesting food, and defecating food. In many cases – hopefully not procreating – I start and complete these functions subconsciously. And speaking of subconsciously, let’s consider our advanced brains and the ability humans have to verbally communicate and store memories.
How Did Humans Evolve Technology Before the Advent of What We Now Call Technology? Name just about anything in your life that you don’t plug into a wall, charge with a battery, drive or fly around in. Technology was still a factor. For example, the advent of eating utensils, the use of money and economic exchanges for purchasing and selling goods and services, indoor plumbing, heating and cooling systems, refrigeration and freezing, stoves and ovens, transportation before the advent of the automobile. And the list goes on.
How Did Humans “Invent” and Progress Math and Science? Yes, I know this, too, is well documented. I still hold the advent and progression of these disciplines in awe.
Let’s pile on a few more examples: How did we conceive towns, cities, states and countries? What about roads, highway systems, bridges and tunnels? What about the linkages that connect all these things?
OK, NOW we can address technology: the invention of the telephone, trains and railroad systems, photography, film cameras, cars and trucks, airplanes and jets, transistors, radio, video cameras, television, audio recordings, long playing records, stereo systems, integrated circuits, space travel, floppy discs, mainframe computers, mini computers, personal computers, hard drives, laptops, solid state drives, cell phones, smart phones, and tablets. This list may seem like a non sequitur. I’ve attempted to place these in some form of chronological order. And I could keep going. For example, in order to help my streaming music sound more similar to the original master recordings, I bought an external DAC (digital to analog converter) that delivers a level of audio quality guaranteed to make any vinyl enthusiasts reconsider their obsession. It does this by taking streams of 0s and 1s transported on the Internet by fiber optic cable into my house and translating it into a signal my 10 year old Denon high fidelity receiver can understand and play back on my 18 year old Klipsch speakers.
Oh my gosh: I forgot to mention the Internet! Then of course there is communicating and exchanging goods and services ON the Internet, plus social networks, the aforementioned streaming audio, and streaming video as well. On this last example, my wife and I both worked in public relations on behalf of the former Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1994. Once one of the world’s leading technology companies, but having since shrunk by 50 percent, DEC invested gobs of money working with cable TV companies to bring to market “video on demand” services – systems of mini computers serving up digital content and carried over telephone lines. While this business model didn’t work out for DEC, look where we are 27 years later. The on-demand model is the norm, with content providers like Disney, Amazon, Apple, and the old-school cable network companies streaming virtually anything we want, when we want it, to our iPhones, virtually wherever we are. And old-fashioned traditional television, also known as “linear television,” where you and I can only watch a certain program aired “live” at a specific time, is rapidly waning.
Speaking of my wife, yesterday afternoon she needed to attend a meeting in Cupertino, located about 25 miles from where we live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Given that we don’t work at Apple, we don’t get down there very often. I had asked my wife if she knew where she was going. She responded, “Sure,” and then pulled out her giant Rand McNally guidebook and a few AAA maps, which she told me she had studied for twenty minutes and then written out point-to-point directions. Of course I’m kidding! Because we both dislike the navigation system in her 2013 Lexus SUV, she fired up Waze on her iPhone and hit the road. Let’s think about that: TWO devices that can instantaneously make contact with GLOBAL POSITIONING SATELLITES that know the exact location of my wife’s phone and car, provide accurate directions and precise estimates for location arrival based on the most up-to-date traffic analyses. And since we’re on the topic of cars, I can pretty much guarantee you that about 10 percent of the cars in my neighborhood are powered by electric batteries alone. Approximately 36 percent of this electricity the folks down the street with their $100,000 Tesla use to charge their battery is generated by renewables.
Can we acknowledge how mind-numbingly amazing just these few examples are? I do not want to deny or diminish the plethora of challenges – the suffering, struggling, starvation, massive economic inequality, and lack of personal safety people in both war-torn countries and poverty-stricken neighborhoods face individually and collectively. But at the same time, we can gain untold amounts of perspective, humility, appreciation and gratitude by exercising our awe muscles far more regularly. I feel much better after composing this list, and I hope you do too.