I began noticing new details around my suburb after I finished my last full-time job. It was in that sweet, blissful period of time before I started working on anything else. We all subconsciously take in the essence of where we live but it’s only ever articulated by those of us who pay attention. And as more of us walk through the streets hunched over the glow of our phones or in loud conversation with our Airpods, few of us take the time to. In that sweet, blissful period, I had the time and what I noticed was this. If I caught the sun beginning to set on my routine walk home from the grocery store, the headland I live on, called Ben Buckler in North Bondi, appears to be dipped in honey. The light hits that hill just so and warms the whole place up. If I’m sitting on my balcony when that same sunset hits, the surfers don’t just catch the last waves of the day - they dance in liquid silver. I wrote these things down a while back, but I remembered them this week. I have been thinking about awe and what it can do for us.
Awe has been on my mind because I have been reading Phosphorescence by Julia Baird. If you’re not familiar with Baird, she is a broadcaster, author and columnist for The New York Times and The Sydney Morning Herald. Her latest book, the one I am reading, is about finding the things that sustain us when the world goes dark. In doing so, Baird has flipped the classic happiness-focussed self-help book on its head. Instead of asking ‘how do we stay happy’ which is all well and good if you are healthy and certain about your future, she asks how do we survive when our worlds fall to pieces? When they are broken by illness or loss or heartbreak, what is “the light within” that keeps us going? Ever since Baird was diagnosed with cancer, which has involved three major surgeries, she has been on the hunt for answers. This book contains many of them and they are powerful but simple. “First, pay attention,” she wrote. “Second, do not underestimate the soothing power of the ordinary. Third, seek awe, and nature, daily. Fourth… well, so many things: show kindness; practise grace; eschew vanity; be bold; embrace friends, family, faith and doubt, imperfection and mess; and live deliberately.”
In a time when our attention has become a commodity preyed on by social media platforms and our lives are interrupted by the consistent pinging of notifications, the decision to seek out the simple things and live deliberately feels like a radical act. It seems ridiculous that many of us are downloading mindfulness apps on the very same devices we’re relieving ourselves from. And even more ludicrous when the solution has been right in front of us, if we just stepped outside and looked around. On a visit to Arnhem Land, Baird learned “a connection to country” is a fundamental part of the identity of Australia’s First Nations people and an ancient practice. “While so much of our self-exploration today is hash-tagged #wellness and displayed, it became obvious to me in the far reach of sacred lands, encircled by campfires and eucalypts, that sometimes the best way to pay attention to country is to keep your mouth shut, open your eyes, and just listen,” she wrote.
When we stop and start paying attention, we don’t just notice more in our surroundings, but are more likely to stumble upon awe - that thing that makes us “stop and stare”. The emotion that both ancient philosophers and social scientists agree humans need on the regular. Research has shown it makes us kinder and more aware of our community. And that last point may be the most vital one. Social psychologist Dacher Keltner is someone Baird mentions in the book, and he told New Scientist magazine this: “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.”
I have been in my head a lot this week. It’s easy to get stuck in there when you’re busy, and this destructive habit leaves us looking at our problems through a magnifying glass. Soon we’re deluded into believing they’re bigger than everything else. There’s no time to pay attention to silver dances or hills dipped in honey, until there has to be, because awe really is the thing that places our lives back on an even keel. As Albert Einstein said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious; it is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” Awe, after all, brings us out of our big, important lives and returns us to a reality where we are just small beings inhabiting a world far greater than our egos. In doing so, it rearranges our perspectives and returns them to us in the right order. We come back to a place where our problems do exist, but they are smaller, more insignificant, because in the context of this wondrous world, so are we.
Some related (and unrelated) recommendations:
Obviously, Phosphorescence. It is full of history, philosophy, science; all pulled together by a curious and generous soul.
This essay by model and feminist Emily Ratajkowski for The Cut about power, consent and trying to regain control of her image. No doubt there will be a lot of opinions. Read it and form your own.
I meant to include this profile on Miranda July last week and forgot. It is brilliant, she is brilliant.
This Medium article, titled, '33 Things I Stole From People Smarter Than Me' is excellent and has a lot of life hacks.
Two recent episodes of The Michelle Obama Podcast are on mentorship (from both a mentor's perspective and mentee's perspective) and they are magnificent. Listen.
If you haven't watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix yet, please do so immediately. A bunch of top tech executives come together to talk about the ethical dilemmas caused by social media platforms - and what it means for our future.
This song, which my sister sent to me this week. It's a couple of years old but she keeps me young.
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