Awe

We assembled two groups of participants, all over the age of seventy-five. Why this age? Because starting in our midfifties, until about the age of seventy-five, people get happier. As we get older, we realize that what matters most in life is not money, status, title, or success, but meaningful social connections. At age seventy-five, though, things change. We become increasingly aware of our own mortality, and we see people we love die. After seventy-five, happiness drops a bit and depression and anxiety rise. It’s a great age to test the powers of the awe walk.

In our study, in the control condition participants were randomly assigned to engage in a vigorous walk once a week for eight weeks, with no mention of awe. In the awe walk condition, once a week our elderly participants followed the instructions to go on mini awe journeys. All participants reported on their happiness, anxiety, and depression and took selfies out on their walks.

Three findings are of note. First, as our elderly participants did their regular awe walk, with each passing week they felt more awe. You might have thought that when we more often experience awe in the wonders of life, those wonders lose their power. This is known as the law of hedonic adaptation, that certain pleasures—consumer purchases, drinking a savory beer, or eating chocolate, for example—diminish with their increased occurrence. Not so with awe. The more we practice awe, the richer it gets.

Second, we found evidence of Solnit’s notion of the self extending into the environment. Namely, compared to participants in the vigorous walk control condition, in the awe walk condition, people’s selfies increasingly included less of the self, which over time drifted off to the side, and more of the outside environment—the neighborhood they were strolling in, the street corner in San Francisco, the trees, the sunset, the cavorting children on a climbing structure. The two photos in the top row below come from a woman in our control condition who was gracious enough to share them, with the photo on the left coming from the start of the study and the one on the right taken when out for a walk; the two photos in the bottom row are from a woman in our awe walk condition (I can see in her second photo a slight laugh of real joy). Pictorial evidence of the vanishing self, and an awareness of being part of something larger.

And finally, over time the positive emotions generated by the awe walk led our elderly participants to feel less anxiety and depression, and to smile with greater joy.

The dour Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, known for his writings on anxiety and dread, found great peace in walking in public spaces. Walking gave him “chance contacts on the streets and alleys,” leading him to observe that “it is wonderful, it is the accidental and insignificant things in life which are significant.” More everyday awe. And very likely, an awareness of everyday moral beauty in walking among others. Jane Jacobs’s thesis in The Death and Life of Great American Cities is much the same, that coming into regular contact on foot with neighbors reduces crime and increases well-being. We find community in syncing up our daily wanderings with others, and in the wonders such walking can bring.

Games

I guess I’m the Forrest Gump of basketball.

That’s how Steve Kerr sums up his life in basketball on the phone to me, with the 2020 NBA season halted by COVID-19. What he means is that for a skinny, six-foot-three professor’s kid, Kerr has had a wonder-filled career playing with Michael Jordan, playing for “Zen master” Phil Jackson and legend Gregg Popovich, and now coaching the Golden State Warriors, who have won three championships under his guidance with some of the most awe-inspiring scoring in the game’s history.

I’m on the phone with Steve thanks to Nick U’Ren, director of basketball operations for the Warriors and a former special assistant to Kerr. Hearing of our science of awe, Nick invited me to drop by Warriors practices from time to time. Amid their championship seasons, he landed me tickets for games, where I watched 15,000 fans dance in sync, moved by waves of Warriors scoring. Over a beer one night I asked Nick what the team’s secret is. After some thought, his reply: Movement.