Cultivating Awe

Wonder includes the capacity to be in awe of humanity, even your own. It allows us to jettison the dangerous belief that things worthy of wonder can only be located on nature hikes and scenic overlooks. This can distract us from the beauty flowing through us daily. For every second that our organs and bones sustain us is a miracle. When those bones

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Laura Francois, founder of the research collective Awe Exchange, who hosted a “Room of Awe” at our recent festival in Tangier, thinks that awe can mobilize and empower social action. She’s specifically interested in what might happen if eco-anxiety were replaced with eco-awe.

We train our focus on beauty here or there—this poem, that architecture—because it is easier than bearing witness to our own story. We begin to gravitate not toward beauty but toward illusion. In this state, you are not approaching what you seek. You are running from your own face. But this is not the way of wonder. Wonder requires a person not to

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