Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
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Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
One of the more surprising findings of recent research is how commonly awe can be found: in museums, theatres, parks, ponds, while listening to a busker, or even, surprisingly, in micro doses, while watching a commercial or reading a story.
Julia Baird • Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
Something happens when you dive into a world where clocks don’t tick and inboxes don’t ping. As your arms circle, swing and pull along the edge of a vast ocean, your mind wanders, and you open yourself to awe, to the experience of seeing something astonishing, unfathomable or greater than yourself. Studies have shown that awe can make us more patie
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I wonder if this is the same sense of awe we experience when seeing magic?
A sense of community can also make us more resilient, not only improving our current state of mind but also protecting our mental health in the future.
Julia Baird • Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
In order to endure, to survive trauma or even just to stay afloat when life threatens to suck us under, we need to know we are not alone.
Julia Baird • Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
Attempting to provide an academic definition of awe, social psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathain Haidt wrote: ‘Two appraisals are central and are present in all clear cases of awe: perceived vastness, and a need for accommodation, defined as an inability to assimilate an experience into current mental structures.’
Julia Baird • Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
The authors of the study, Masaki Kobayashi, Daisuke Kikuchi and Hitoshi Okamura, concluded that we all ‘directly and rhythmically’ emit light: ‘The human body literally glimmers. The intensity of the light emitted by the body is 1000 times lower than the sensitivity of our naked eyes.’
Julia Baird • Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
we should force ourselves out of gyms and off machines and into the natural world, knowing, or hoping, that we may stumble upon awe.
Julia Baird • Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
when dwarfed by an experience, we are more likely to look to one another and care for one another and feel more connected.
Julia Baird • Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
Today, scientists are trying to measure awe by goosebumps. (Only cold, adrenaline or strong emotion are more likely to cause goosebumps in a human being.) In an increasingly awe-deprived culture, when we are more likely to get lost in our screens than in the woods or public galleries, when we hedge our children’s explorations with our anxieties and
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