The way my daughter dealt with the stillbirth of her son. I was with her at the hospital when he was delivered and her strength in dealing with this left me in awe. My little girl grew up overnight and exhibited awesome strength and bravery during this difficult time.
The courage required in combat is another time-honored source of awe. This is a stirring theme found in Greek and Roman myths, gripping scenes in films like Saving Private Ryan, and war stories veterans tell, as in this story from South Africa:
I was in the Angolan war. One of our soldiers got shot. An officer risked his life and fears to drag the soldier to safety. In the process the officer was wounded but continued saving the soldier’s life. I came out of hiding and secured the area for enough time in order for the officer to drag the soldier to safety.
Horrific acts also occasioned awe, but much less commonly, and most typically in epiphanies found in art, as in this example from Sweden:
The first time I saw Schindler’s List back in 2011. The music and the performance of the main actor were insanely powerful. And the grim truth of human nature. All I wanted to do, and all I did the next few hours, was cry.
Human atrocities captivate our imagination, but are more aptly deemed the provenance of horror, a different state than awe. And art, we shall see, so often provides a space in our imagination for contemplating human horrors, giving rise to aesthetic experiences of awe.
A second wonder of life is collective effervescence, a term introduced by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his analysis of the emotional core of religion. 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.” Across the twenty-six cultures, people told stories of collective effervescence at weddings, christenings, quinceañeras, bar and bat mitzvahs, graduations, sports celebrations, funerals, family reunions, and political rallies, as in this one from Russia:
At the parade of victory, the city and entire country were with me. There was a procession called “Immortal Regiment” with portraits of soldier participants of the war. I felt pride for my country and people.
A third wonder of life should not surprise. It is nature. Often what inspired natural awe was a cataclysmic event—earthquakes, thunderstorms, lightning, wildfires, gale-force winds, and tsunamis, or for one participant from China, watching a flood rip through her village. Many mentioned night skies, whose patterns of stars and illumination were an inspiration of Greek, Roman, and Mesoamerican imaginings of the gods. Many worry today about how the dimming of the night sky in this era of light pollution is harming our capacity to wonder. Experiences in mountains, looking at canyons, walking among large trees, running through vast sand dunes, and first encounters with the ocean brought people awe, as in this example from Mexico:
The first time I saw the ocean. I was still only a child, listening to the waves and wind, feeling the breeze.
Common to experiences of natural awe is the sense that plants and animals are conscious and aware, an idea found in many Indigenous traditions and attracting scientific attention today. In this story of wild awe translated from Russian, notice how the participant remarks upon the awareness of trees, which seem to be looking at something alongside them:
Five years ago, collecting mushrooms in the forest, I bumped into an uncommon hole in the ground. Around it all the trees stood in a circle as if gazing into the hole.
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. In this story from Switzerland, the individual feels connected to something larger than the self, a defining theme of awe:
It was at around Christmas several years ago. I was away on a trip to different monasteries in west Switzerland with fellow students. We were in a Dominican monastery. It was snowing outside and it was freezing cold. The Romanesque church was only dimly lit and you could hear Gregorian songs—the acoustics were unparalleled. A feeling of reverence for something bigger and at the same time a feeling of comfort came over me.
Musical awe often arose in response to favorite rock groups, virtuosos, and, perhaps most poignantly, children, as in this story from Ireland:
When my seven-year-old daughter went in front of a couple hundred people and played the tin whistle with such determination and I was in awe of her courage to do that. She got an applause after her performance. We were attending her communion in the local church with her brothers and extended family. I felt nervous for her before her performance but was in awe at the way she did her performance so well and the way she handled herself at such a young age. I gave her a big hug and kiss after and told her she was great.
So much for booming electric guitars; give me a tin whistle any day.
Visual design proved to be a fifth wonder of life. Buildings, terra-cotta warriors in China, dams, and paintings appeared in stories of awe from around the world. So too did more surprising kinds of visual design, as in this example from South Africa:
I went to a customer factory for a machine inspection on a pharmaceutical sorting line. The machine’s capabilities were astounding—mind-blowing. I was in complete awe with the functionality, speed, and design of the machine. This happened roughly one year ago inside my customer’s factory and I was with my colleague (designer of the machine).
In his book The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley suggested that the visual design of jewels opens our minds to the mystic’s way of perceiving the world. The awe we feel in relation to visual design allows us to locate ourselves within cultural systems that we may be part of. You may feel this in relation to Haussmann’s grand boulevards in Paris, a Mayan pyramid, the graffiti of Barcelona, and for some, a machine that sorts pills.
Stories of spiritual and religious awe were a sixth wonder of life. These weren’t as common as you might imagine, given our perennial search for nirvana, satori, bliss, or samadhi. Some experiences of mystical awe were classic conversion stories like that of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus or the Buddha under the bodhi tree, as in this example from Singapore:
When the Holy Spirit of God came upon me at a Life in the Spirit Seminar organized by the Catholic church. It was so powerful I could not stand and instantly collapsed but I was conscious of my surroundings and as my eyes were closed I could only see a very bright white light. Before the event I felt that the world had rejected me, that no one cared. When the event happened, I immediately felt lifted but most important of all I felt loved.
Other stories like this one from Canada mix mystical awe with sexual desire, a timeless blending of the sacred and the profane.
I met a man at our local farmers market who opened my eyes about meditation and the power of one’s body and emotions. With one touch of my shoulders he was able to see through me (in a sense). His presence and knowledge let me want to learn more. . . . Therefore I started to take meditation classes with him on a weekly basis. I learned so much about my body, mind, and spirit.
We shall see how often the sensations that arise during mystical awe, and all encounters with the wonders of life, involve touch, feeling embraced, a warm presence, and an awareness of being seen—clues, perhaps, to the deep origins of the emotion.