Updated January 23, 2025
I choose awe.
Awe is better than happiness.
By noticing awe and wonder, you’ll learn more about the subtle balance of being in the world, as well as of the world, and take things less personally — which is a trait that creative people cultivate.
My invitation to you is to choose to join me in cultivating awe amid the darkness we’re in today. Notice the moments of awe around you. Do things that create awe. Guide others to experience it.
None of us is going to feel perpetually connected to awe. We will all have moments of despair, anguish, pessimism, and profound inertia. But we don’t have to go through this alone. Let’s commit to being a community that cultivates awe. We can light each other’s way.
The field guide I’m using now is “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder & How It Can Transform Your Life” by Dacher Keltner. It helps us understand and incorporate the emotion of awe into our daily lives. The book is divided into four sections, each exploring different aspects of awe and its impact on our lives.
- Section I: The Science of Awe
- Section II: Stories of Transformative Awe
- Section III: Cultural Archives of Awe
- Section IV: Living a Life of Awe
In the face of all the ways that life is dark and ugly, I’m choosing to cultivate awe. It’s one example of how I’m committing to hope.
Cultivating awe is also my defiant middle finger to the forces that would have us fall paralyzed into despair.
As long as there is awe, I will never give up.
This is fundamentally different for me now than in 2016: I know that awe is enough to get me through these times. It has been a source of energy, inspiration, and stamina for all these years. Awe is at the center of my life and at the heart of how I am helping the people around me sustain their sensitive revolutions.
Join me, through this website and in the community of Gifted Professionals and Communicators to seek out awe in everyday, accessible places:
- In the beauty of the loving and selfless acts I notice others perform
- In the rhythms and the transformations of nature
- In the space inside my heart from which my emotions flow
- In the connections that I have to people, animals, places, books, art, music, rituals, and spirit.
