A swim is a reminder of the vastness of the ocean and all it contains. We spend a lot of time in life trying to make ourselves feel bigger — to project ourselves, occupy space, command attention, demand respect — so much so that we seem to have forgotten how comforting it can be to feel small and experience the awe that comes from being silenced by something greater than ourselves, something unfathomable, unconquerable and mysterious.
This sense of smallness seems to be a key to a true experience of awe, and in turn to linking with others. 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.’ They pointed out that architects of religious structures have always attempted to engender a sense of smallness, and consequently awe, by designing buildings on a grand scale: soaring ceilings, domed canopies, enormous columns, vast stained-glass windows. During his research, Paul Piff noted that people who stood near an enormous T-Rex skeleton subsequently more strongly identified as being in a group, possibly because they viewed themselves differently when shadowed by a huge — if extinct — beast.
In one study of American and Chinese people, Keltner found that after experiencing awe, people signed their names in tinier letters. He told New Scientist magazine that the reason for this is that ‘awe produces a vanishing self. The voice in your head, self-interest, self-consciousness, disappears. Here’s an emotion that knocks out a really important part of our identity . . . I think the central idea of awe is to quiet self-interest for a moment and to fold us into the social collective.’
This is also what we sense when we swim in the sea. We become small. When we shrink in significance, we become better at living alongside and caring for others. And we become more content.
FORTUNATELY, CULTIVATING AWE does not have to mean daily ocean dives, annual trips to see the northern lights, or bungee jumping in the Grand Canyon. 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. Amie Gordon from Berkley tracked people’s reports of awe for two weeks and found that on average, they encountered something that inspired awe every three days, such as ‘music played on a street corner at 2 am, individuals standing up to injustice, or autumnal leaves cascading from trees.’
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 fears, it seems increasingly vital that we deliberately seek such experiences whenever we can. The good news is that they are very often all around us, in every corner of nature.
Chapter 2
Bathe in Nature
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
— Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat
A LOVE OF NATURE is coiled within our bones, laced in our marrow, steeped in our blood. But about a decade ago, the world-scale finally tipped from the country to the city, as urban dwellers began to outweigh country dwellers. Today, about 55 per cent of us live in cities: a mind-boggling shift that we seem to have barely grappled with. The United Nations estimates that by the 2050s more than two-thirds of us will inhabit urban areas, and this figure will be much higher in the developed world. For all the unknown consequences, of one thing we can be certain: soon, more and more of us will become deprived or starved of nature, will spend days and months without glimpsing an expanse of green, a stretch of blue or an uninterrupted horizon, and will surely experience, as a result, a kind of unidentified ache or restlessness.
What will the effect of this be on our psyches? In short, we do not yet fully know, but the early signs are clear, and the evidence is building. Urbanisation has already been associated with mental illness, though it is not certain why. Instinctively, many of us are feeling the discomfort of disconnection from nature. We willingly pay money for apps that treat us like grounded teenagers by blocking wifi access; we google ‘blackspot’ resorts that force us to log off and stare at the hills, the trees or the starry sky as we try to still the habitual twitching of our hands.
Florence Williams, author of the bestselling book The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative, says we have lost more than we realised, because of our ‘epidemic dislocation from the outdoors’. ‘Yes, we’re busy,’ she writes. ‘We’ve got responsibilities. But beyond that, we’re experiencing a mass generational amnesia enabled by urbanization and digital creep.’ And there is an ugly anger marbling public debate now, fuelled by the fact that we are crowding together in an increasingly lonely fashion: unable to fully concentrate on faces opposite us, stooping on sidewalks to peer at lit screens, returning home to lament, rage or throw rotten vegetables online at strangers we may have nodded at on the subway just a few hours earlier.
As Johann Hari writes in Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression — and the Unexpected Solutions, it is only in the past fifteen years that the psychological effects of being cut off from the natural world have been recognised, a condition dubbed ‘nature deficit disorder’. And it is only now that benefits of immersion in it are being subject to rigorous testing.
All over the world, scientists have been conducting reams of research to assess the psychological and physical rewards of spending time in nature, with all five senses open and alert. They’ve sent people on walks through remote forests, parks, stands of conifers and kiwifruit orchards in summertime; flooded them with the scent of cedarwood in laboratories; blindfolded them and given them sheets of aluminium then real leaves to feel, or authentic then artificial pansies — all while monitoring moods, heart rates, cortisol levels in saliva, glucose levels in blood, hypertension, haemoglobin, sleep quality and subjects’ senses of comfort and relaxation, among other things. And the findings are astounding.
In short: when we are exposed to sunlight, trees, water or even just a view of green leaves, we become happier, healthier and stronger. People living in green spaces have more energy and a stronger sense of purpose, and being able to see green spaces from your home is associated with reduced cravings for alcohol, cigarettes and harmful foods. The closer we live to nature the better, and even just being surrounded by plants can help. A 2019 study of an impressive 90,000 people found that residential green space in childhood is associated with lower risk of psychiatric disorders from adolescence into adulthood. Fifteen minutes spent wandering in a city park made male Japanese students feel less stressed; a seventeen-minute walk made a group of men more ‘comfortable, relaxed, natural, vigorous’ and less tired, confused and anxious. When people move to greener areas, depression lifts. Inhabitants of buildings with more gardens and plants are less aggressive, more disciplined and, according to a Chicago study of public-housing residents, have better concentration. Moods lighten in parks. Kids exposed to nature perform better in tests.