Cultivating Awe

Children are made of awe. We have much to learn from them, but we seldom aim to. When we encounter the freedom of a child, we can choose to participate in their liberation or we can grow to resent the freedom in them.

I think awe is an exercise, both a doing and a being. It is a spiritual muscle of our humanity that we can only keep from atrophying if we exercise it habitually.

‘As we work to reverse these long-term socio-economic and socio-political trends to foster more connections to others, stronger communities, more pro-sociality and more kindness, in the short term it would make more sense to foster more experiences of awe, for ourselves and for others. It might, at least, serve as a shortcut to the kinds of psychol

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