A third wonder of life should not surprise. It is nature.

Human waves now ritualistically arise at football games, political rallies, concerts, and graduations. They tend to move clockwise and travel at a speed of twenty seats per second.

One of the most alarming trends in the lives of children today is the disappearance of awe. We are not giving them enough opportunities to discover and experience the wonders of life. Art and music classes do not make the school budget. The free-form play of recess and lunchtime is being replaced with drills to boost scores on tests that have only

What is an experience of awe that you have had, when you encountered a vast mystery that transcends your understanding of the world?

His phrase speaks to the qualities of such experiences: we feel like we are buzzing and crackling with some life force that merges people into a collective self, a tribe, an oceanic “we.”

How does awe transform us? By quieting the nagging, self-critical, overbearing, status-conscious voice of our self, or ego, and empowering us to collaborate, to open our minds to wonders, and to see the deep patterns of life.

Awe, by contrast, seems to orient us to devote ourselves to things outside of our individual selves. To sacrifice and serve.

Music offered up a fourth wonder of life, transporting people to new dimensions of symbolic meaning in experiences at concerts, listening quietly to a piece of music, chanting in a religious ceremony, or simply singing with others.

Because of the narrowing of the female pelvis, brought about by our species’ shift to walking upright, and the disproportionate size of the human head to accommodate our large, language-producing brain, our infants are born premature. In fact, wildly premature, taking ten to fifty-two years to reach semifunctioning independence, if there is such a