Awe: When Your System Updates Entirely
Awe is that emotion that appears before something so vast it doesn't fit in your head: a mountain, the night sky, a piece of music, an idea that blows your mind. For an instant, you become small—and curiously, that feels good.
1. The Science of Awe
The Neuroscientific and Psychological Approach
Dacher Keltner, from UC Berkeley, defines awe as being before something vast that overflows your way of understanding the world (what he calls "vastness" and "need for accommodation": your mind has to reorganize itself to encompass it).
- It shrinks the ego: in his experiments, people who felt awe drew themselves smaller. He called it the "small self," the small me.
- It has effects on the body: awe activates the vagus nerve and has been associated with lower levels of inflammation markers like IL-6.
A Mix of Fear and Surprise
In Plutchik's wheel, awe is born from mixing fear (before the immense) and surprise (before the unexpected). That's why it overwhelms you and opens you up at the same time.
2. What It's For
Awe pulls you out of the loop of "me, my problems, my head" and repositions you within something bigger. It reorders priorities, lowers mental noise and, according to research, makes us a bit more generous and connected.
3. How to Seek More Awe
- Put yourself in the path of the vast: nature, art, music, the sky, big ideas. You don't need an epic journey; a walk looking upward works.
- Slow down and look as if it were the first time. Awe lives in attention, not in rushing.
- Share it. Telling what has overwhelmed you multiplies the effect.
The Technological Metaphor
Awe is the update of your entire operating system. What you're seeing doesn't fit in the model you had, so the system rewrites itself to be able to encompass it. You come out with a slightly more expanded version of yourself.
You don't need the world to be bigger. You need to stop and notice how big it already is.