Everything I write comes down to one thing: replacing default with intention. Default is what you do without choosing it, repeating what was done before or what others do. Intention is consciously committing to a direction. Each piece approaches it from a different angle, and together they build toward an authentic, happy and meaningful life.

Awe is the feeling you get in the presence of something so vast that you cannot quite take it in. A night sky far from the city. A piece of music that stops you. Someone doing something so kind or brave that it changes how you see people. Psychologists describe awe by those two parts: something vast, and the need to stretch your understanding to make room for it.  I describe it as being in complete admiration and appreciation of life. Thankfully, I’ve been experiencing it a lot lately.

The default: no time for wonder
Awe rarely makes it onto our to-do lists. When our time is organized around what we need to achieve, experiences without a particular result can easily be left to chance. We pass something beautiful without stopping, or remain so occupied with our own thoughts that we barely notice it. That is a loss, because awe can enrich how we experience life and how we relate to others.

What awe does
In one experiment, people spent a single minute looking up at a grove of towering eucalyptus trees. Afterward, when a researcher nearby dropped a box of pens, they helped pick up more of them than people who had spent that minute looking at a building. Across several studies, the researchers found that awe could encourage generosity and helping, partly through a reduced focus on the individual self and its own concerns.

This is what feeling “smaller” means here: becoming less occupied with ourselves and more aware of being part of something larger. Our concerns can take up less of our attention, leaving more room to notice the world and other people, and to contribute.

In another study, older adults were asked to take fifteen-minute walks once a week for eight weeks. One group received additional instructions to approach their walks with a sense of wonder and look for things that inspired awe. Compared with the ordinary-walk group, they showed greater increases in joy and emotions such as compassion and appreciation during their walks. In the photographs they took of themselves along the way, they also occupied progressively less of the frame, while the surroundings took up more of the picture. Outside the walks, they reported increasing compassion and other feelings oriented toward others, alongside decreasing daily distress.

Where awe comes from
Nature, art, and music are the sources most people think of. But in research collecting accounts of awe from people in twenty-six countries, a particularly common source was other people: their kindness, their courage, their ability to overcome something hard. Awe is not reserved for nature only. I find it such a beautiful thing that it can be found in the person across from you.

Being an admirer of life is part of how I understand my purpose. Years ago, I started taking regular solo trips to Mallorca, off season, where I would hike up a mountain without encountering anyone along the way. I would sit there in silence, hearing only the ocean and feeling the sun on my face. I was in awe of the surroundings, but also very much of simply being. A moment like that can feel like enough to make an entire life worthwhile.

On those hikes, I started noticing chairs in unexpected places, overlooking a beautiful view, and photographing them. Someone had put a chair there because there was something worth sitting down for. I imagine them taking in the surroundings, perhaps returning to that same spot. Finding those chairs makes me feel connected to someone I have never met, through a shared appreciation of the beauty around us.