Awe imbues people with a different sense of themselves, one that is smaller, more humble and part of something larger. Our research finds that even brief experiences of awe, such as being amid beautiful tall trees, lead people to feel less narcissistic and entitled and more attuned to the common humanity people share with one another.
— From an 2015 New York Times article about research into awe and “awe deprivation.”
Swimmers in naturally blue swimming hole at Blue Hole National Park in BZ. The blue the water the deeper it is. The swimming holes at the site are cool and oh-so-healing.
As a civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information, but only for want of appreciation…
Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.
— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel*
Saturday in the jungle I experienced a sense of awe that didn’t literally give me goose bumps, but it did overwhelm me with euphoria, what the dictionary defines as “a feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness.”
I rode my motorcycle down to Blue Hole National Park*, a natural, 575-acre wonderland of hiking trails through lush jungles, water caves and hillside caves, blue swimming holes, 200 species of birds, and exotic butterflies.
Zebra Heliconia: a few of these guys were among those that swarmed me Saturday high up on a mountain trail in Blue Hole National Park
It was swarms of butterflies on a point on a hiking trail that wowed me the most, probably because I went to Blue Hole for swimming and cave tubing and hiking and birding and not looking to get swarmed by butterflies that looked like they just floated in from the Garden of Eden to see me.
I mean, if you live in Central America, you can expect to see exotic butterflies rather routinely in all the mountainous jungles, especially in preserves and at resorts and butterfly farms.
But I’d never had such colorful Central American butterflies light on my head and hand and show me so much extravagant hospitality.
Belize is famous for its gazillions of ancient caves where the Mayans left behind artifacts that can be viewed deep down in the tunnels today. Parks provide miners’ headlights for as little as $1.50. (If you want to experience full-out creepy darkness, turn off your headlight in a Belizean cave.) This is the entrance to St. Herman’s Cave which I explored Saturday, but only for a couple of hundred yards on the limited self-guided tour. The entire tour of the enormous cave requires the cost of a tour guide and I’ve been there, done that at other sites a few times.
A few years ago a couple of psychology professor types did a study on why we experience awe, why were are suffering from “awe deprivation,” and what to do about it.
In a 2015 New York Times piece about their findings, Paul Piff of the University of California, Irvine, and Dacher Keltner at the University of California in Berkeley wrote:
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You could make the case that our culture today is awe-deprived. Adults spend more and more time working and commuting and less time outdoors and with other people. Camping trips, picnics and midnight skies are forgone in favor of working weekends and late at night. Attendance at arts events — live music, theater, museums and galleries — has dropped over the years. This goes for children, too: Arts and music programs in schools are being dismantled in lieu of programs better suited to standardized testing; time outdoors and for novel, unbounded exploration are sacrificed for résumé-building activities.
We believe that awe deprivation has had a hand in a broad societal shift that has been widely observed over the past 50 years: People have become more individualistic, more self-focused, more materialistic and less connected to others.
And what was their prescription for awe deprivation?
Drs. Piff and Keltner wrote:
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To reverse this trend, we suggest that people insist on experiencing more everyday awe, to actively seek out what gives them goose bumps, be it in looking at trees, night skies, patterns of wind on water or the quotidian nobility of others — the teenage punk who gives up his seat on public transportation, the young child who explores the world in a state of wonder, the person who presses on against all odds.
All of us will be better off for it.
Read the whole NY Times piece here.
And then treat yourself to some awe.
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*Learn more about the park and the ancient St. Herman’s Cave here.
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Along one of the hiking trails at Blue Hole..
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Click here for more on the great Rabbi Heschel, who wrote extensively about wonder, “radical amazement” and nature.
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