It's important — and healthy — to be awed
The author’s grandson admiring and photographing hoodoos at Bryce Canyon National Park. Credit: Newsday/Michael Dobie
It was early evening when we got to the campground. Being not quite yet the middle of August, there still was plenty of light in the sky. We ate a quick dinner and, with rain in the forecast, hurriedly set up our tent. Then we took a short walk to the rim of the canyon that gives southern Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park its name.
My grandson, now 13, led the way up the gentle rise as Bryce’s hoodoos came into view. The gnarled rocks, in shades of red and yellow and orange and purple, sculpted and twisted by thousands of years of rain and ice and snow, spread out below us like a forest of phantasms.
"Whoa," my grandson said, breaking the silence. "Crazy."
It was an appropriate response, and one I was glad to hear because it had a tone of awe.
It was a tone we heard often on the trip.
It was there as we gazed up at a night sky that seemed to stretch forever, a vista filled with an impossible number of stars in alignments and constellations that challenged comprehension, a view unencumbered by human-made light.
It was there the next day as a pelting rain turned into hail, and as the hail grew larger with each successive wave until the ground was an inches-deep blanket of white, a winter wonderland in the heat of summer.
It was there later when we gazed into and across Arizona’s Grand Canyon, an expanse that stuns no matter how many times you’ve seen it or how prepared you think you are for the spectacle.
My grandson’s reaction was a powerful reminder of the importance of awe in our lives. It’s healthy to experience something that puts us in our place, that reorients our reality. Awe is transcendent. It has a feel of reverence, a tinge of the sublime, a touch of the sacred.
Socrates believed that wonder is the beginning of wisdom. Einstein said "he who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." Two of humankind’s greatest thinkers, making a case for being humbled.
There are all kinds of awe and all sorts of opportunities to be awed, if we open ourselves to it.
There is awe in seeing Bryce Canyon’s hoodoos, yes, and in marveling at a sunrise or sunset. And there is awe in holding a newborn baby.
There is awe in discovering a 2,492-karat diamond like the one found recently in Botswana and unveiled Thursday — and awe in encountering a revered leader like the Dalai Lama as thousands of people experienced that same day in Elmont.
There is awe in witnessing an act of selfless human kindness, a magnificent concert performance, or a long home run from Aaron Judge.
There also is a darker side of awe, as when one observes the destructive fury of Mother Nature.
Science is discovering awe. It is not considered one of our six basic emotions — anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear and sadness. But it is something similar, according to University of California-Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, who wrote a book about awe.
Awe, like those emotions, provokes a physical response in the body, Keltner found, and it has positive psychological benefits, too.
Awe is an antidote to narcissism because it gets us out of ourselves. It makes us feel smaller and bigger, all at the same time. It’s a remedy for the jaded cynicism with which too many of us live our lives, when nothing is surprising and everything has been seen and done before.
To feel awe is to be reminded that there is specialness and uniqueness in this world and in ourselves.
"Wow," said my grandson, standing atop Angel’s Window on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
We all need some wow in our lives.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
