Cultivating Awe

If you want to know if you’ve forgotten how to marvel, try staring at something beautiful for five minutes and see where your mind goes.

‘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

Awe is not a lens through which to see the world but our sole path to seeing. Any other lens is not a lens but a veil. And I’ve come to believe that our beholding—seeing the veils of this world peeled back again and again, if only for a moment—is no small form of salvation.

More than the grand beauties of our lives, wonder is about having the presence to pay attention to the commonplace. It could be said that to find beauty in the ordinary is a deeper exercise than climbing to the mountaintop.