A Charm Against Life Weariness and Despair
Incantations for awe
Dead.
The Seigneur of Montaigne, a French soldier of fortune and patriarch of a noble house — once so full of wit and energy — was no more.
His grieving son, Michel de Montaigne, retreated to his ancestral estate but found his mood no better amid idyllic vineyards and forests. There were plenty of upsetting things to consider, after all. The bloody French Wars of Religion simmered threateningly, his best friend had just died, plagues rampaged through the cities, and with his father gone, new responsibilities were dumped on Montaigne’s lap.
Shut up in his library tower and separated from his once-active life, Montaigne’s mood worsened.
Perhaps, as Silvia Pathe wrote in The Moon and the Yew Tree, his mind turned reductive and clinical:
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
…I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
Dwelling on his troubles, unfocused toward any end, he wrote that his mind “bolted off like a runaway horse,” giving birth to “many chimeras and fantastic monstrosities.1”
But Montaigne’s salvation wasn’t fleeing into busyness, but freeing himself with a pen. A series of powerful essays resulted after he learned to corral his thoughts along certain uplifting paths.
As wise men and women have discovered since time immemorial, one of the most uplifting turned out to be awe.
The Path To Wonder and Awe
“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”
— G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles
In Plato’s Theaetetus, Socrates insists "wonder belongs to the philosopher," and Aristotle thought the feeling gave rise to the philosophical urge.
When faced with something vast and sublime — or even terrifying — we can feel reverence, admiration, or interconnection in a way that shakes us free of gloom and reductive thinking. It elevates us.
The Stoic philosopher Seneca’s advice seems custom-made for Montaigne:
“…ennui cannot take over one’s life when one ponders the variety, the majesty, the sublimity in things around us: it is when one’s leisure is spent in idleness that one is overcome by self-loathing. The mind that traverses all the universe will never weary of truth...2”
A modern researcher wrote that awe can “restructure individuals' mental frames so deeply that it could be considered a therapeutic asset for major mental health issues, including depression.3”
Other researchers suggest, “…awe-inducing events may be one of the fastest and most powerful methods of personal change and growth4.”
There are limitless things that can inspire wonder and awe, but only rarely does the sublime thrust itself before our eyes so forcefully that awe is inescapable. To feel it we must overcome the human urge to compartmentalize — to reduce everything to constituent parts shorn of meaning and context.
If we’re missing the forest for the trees, living in a world of isolated trunks, we can learn to mentally weave a forest worthy of awe. We can elevate ourselves by stitching magic from the dross and commonplace.
I want to talk about several ways to feel wonder, starting with literal forests.
But first, we need to address a concern — are we talking about BSing ourselves into awe? Are these just delusions that make us feel better?
A Rational Awe
Most Stoic philosophical exercises fall into the buckets of zooming in or zooming out — breaking our delusions or weaving an enchantment from the commonplace to make life worth living.
The first shines a spotlight on the tendency to trade our lives for ugly things, or fine things that cost us something priceless. But people can take this too far and get stuck in the myopically zoomed-in mode, stumbling through life ungrounded. If everything is ugly and shorn of meaning, nihilism, depression, or listlessness are the natural consequences.
The second bucket — zooming out and observing with awe and wonder — counters this. It helps us notice a golden thread of the sacred running through all things. But is this perspective delusional? Some of what humans hold sacred certainly is.
But deciding nothing is sacred, and refusing every chance to feel awe because of a misunderstanding of rationality, is a recipe for disaster. I think we can weave ourselves a religion that grounds us in life without self-delusion.
So I’m going to focus on awe and the thread of the sacred we can find in the material world. It all starts with shrinking the self.
Awe in the Forest:
“The greatest delight that the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and vegetable.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Our reductionist urge renders the world’s marvels unremarkable. Nowhere is this more apparent than with plants.
Take this modestly titled study: “Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field5”. You’d never know scientists had made a breakthrough — discovering forests are greater than the sum of their parts, a “wood wide web” of mutual aid. This study might have been titled “Trees Are Doing Crazy Shit, Bro, Come Look At This!”
It took Richard Powers — a writer of fiction — to take this and other arboreal discoveries and weave them into an awe-inducing broader zoomed-out perspective. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Overstory, he has a scientist say:
“We found that trees could communicate, over the air and through their roots. Common sense hooted us down. We found that trees take care of each other. Collective science dismissed the idea. Outsiders discovered how seeds remember the seasons of their childhood and set buds accordingly. Outsiders discovered that trees sense the presence of other nearby life. That a tree learns to save water. That trees feed their young and synchronize their masts and bank resources and warn kin and send out signals to wasps to come and save them from attacks. “Here’s a little outsider information, and you can wait for it to be confirmed. A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren’t shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.”
Scientists may suggest he goes too far, but does the thought of a tree collective growing aware give you goosebumps? Does it make you stop and consider the oak stand in the park in a new light? What are these things, funtioning on a scale we’ve never imagined? This is the stuff of awe.
Philosophy and science spells out the truth, great literature embodies it.
We can either make room for awe-inducing art that paints a picture from facts, or we can meditate on an expanded perspective to generate what philosopher Pierre Hadot called that “oceanic feeling.” Stoics call this “the view from above.” Either way, we begin to see ourselves as part of something greater, with the whole forming a sacred other that’s worthy of awe and consideration due to the scale of it, if nothing else. In such a universe, each of us, and all of human civilization, is a small speck of little significance.
Hiking Isn’t Enough.
“It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.” — Montaigne, Des Cannibales
Research demonstrates that humans’ physical and mental health improves in nature — but not equally.
Those who don’t perceive their own connection to the natural order seem to benefit much less. One group of researchers theorized:
“…these (nonresponding) individuals, even when they spend a lot of time in nature, are not conscious of nature, and therefore do not receive the wellbeing benefit from nature experience than people who are more conscious of nature.6”
So if you think the great outdoors is nothing but a dirty warren of mosquitoes with no significance for modern man, a hike won’t do you much good. If the heavens are just a lifeless void full of burning gas spheres and hunks or rock hurtling on preordained paths, why look up?
Improbably, something exists rather than nothing. You can feel awe at that or decide it’s inconsequential. Shrug or wonder? Your choice.
The golden ratio keeps repeating — in plant growth, seashells, and the arms of spiral galaxies. Shrug or wonder? Your choice.
Chemists have spent 50 years putting the constituents for life in ideal conditions, but repeatedly fail to create the DNA-based life forms they think should emerge. Life is still a mystery. Shrug or wonder? Your choice.
To get anything out of these wonders, we need to weave a story that relates us to them. There’s leeway in exactly how you do this. Take your pick.
Being Small Amid The Storm
“And so he will contract his brow when the prospect is forbidding, will shudder at sudden apparitions, and will become dizzy when he stands at the edge of a high precipice and looks down…” — Seneca, Epistles, LVII
When I almost died in a flash flood I was surprised to find myself calm. Afterward, I was surprisingly happy. Until I was trapped in a raging torrent, tree trunks hurling past, I didn’t understand my place in the grand scheme of things, nor how fragile and improbable existence was. It temporarily reordered my thinking in a positive way.
I’m hardly alone in this. Researchers have found that awe related to threatening nature stimuli — even just viewing videos of tornados — can elicit a sense of “small self” and prosocial behavior and generosity7.
In Awe of Goodness
If we were able to examine the mind of a good man, what a beautiful sight we should see: how pure, how astonishing in its noble calm — bright with justice and strength, with moderation and wisdom.” — Seneca, Epistles, 115.3
The Stoics recognized that observing or considering the virtuous conduct of others is another generator of awe.
When subjects watched either a documentary about Mother Teresa or a control video selection of a “neutral” documentary and funny video clips, the Mother Teresa group felt more loving, inspired, and connected, described warm and pleasant feelings in their chest, and were more likely to report wanting to become better people. The Mother Teresa group was also subsequently more likely to volunteer with charity organizations8.
After watching videos of musicians expressing gratitude to their mentors, subjects were more likely to agree to help others study9.
Virtue, then, may well be contagious, if we can bother to acknowledge it.
We tend to think “saints” are far away and lived in other eras, but they’re all around us. Marcus Aurelius noted our stubborn unwillingness to appreciate the positive traits of our neighbors and family:
“They refuse to admire their contemporaries, the people whose lives they share. No, but to be admired by posterity—people they’ve never met and never will—that’s what they set their hearts on. You might as well be upset at not being a hero to your great-grandfather.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.18
People aren’t perfect, but almost everyone has virtues to admire and emulate. It’s up to us to find them, acknowledge them, and try to adopt them ourselves.
When everyone around you is a teacher in one small area, we feel a kind of awe for their excellence that makes us want to grow.
Wonder at the Commonplace:
Each blade of grass emerging from a concrete sea is an improbable miracle, but it’s hard to see this unless we frame it so.
Outside my window, grackles shriek staccato blasts, like speaker feedback, hopping about on flapping wings. They’re amazing, and I often stared at them when I moved to Texas a decade ago. Now, it’s hard to notice how bizarre they are unless I make an effort. Familiarity in the enemy of awe, and must be combated with thought.
You’ve probably heard of the hedonic adaptation — the tendency to return to a baseline of happiness after each new happiness-inducing occurrence. The same occurs with awe and wonder. Familiarity breeds contempt, and we’re on a wonder treadmill that renders the remarkable completely forgettable. Forcing ourselves to acknowledge commonplace wonders should be a constant project.
“We should remember that even Nature's inadvertence has its own charm, its own attractiveness,” Marcus Aurelius wrote. “The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven; the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why.
Or how ripe figs begin to burst.
And olives on the point of falling: the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty.
Stalks of wheat bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of the lion. Flecks of foam on the boar's mouth.
And other things. If you look at them in isolation there's nothing beautiful about them, and yet by supplementing nature they enrich it and draw us in. And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure. Even what seems inadvertent. He'll find the jaws of live animals as beautiful as painted ones or sculptures. He'll look calmly at the distinct beauty of old age in men, women, and at the loveliness of children. And other things like that will call out to him constantly—things unnoticed by others. Things seen only by those at home with Nature and its works.”
Creating Awe
These are hardly the only awe-inducers.
Anything besides cold that causes goosebumps — piloerection — probably moves you in the right direction.
Observing nature and thinking on wonders is part of it, but you may find journaling like a philosopher — which is not far off from what Montaigne ended up doing — helps too.
Awe and wonder are a practice, and worthwhile ones. And like any worthwhile practice, they take work.
Thanks for reading Socratic State of Mind.
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Montaigne, On Idleness
Seneca, Epistles, Letter 78. Note that the Latin words translated as “ennui” is “satietas sui,” or “(over)fullness.” It could also reasonably be translated as “boredom”, “surfeit of self,” or “melancholy”.
Chirico A and Gaggioli A (2021) The Potential Role of Awe for Depression: Reassembling the Puzzle. Front. Psychol.
Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297–314.
Simard, S. et al. Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field. Nature 388, 579–582 (1997).
Chang, Cc. et al. A lower connection to nature is related to lower mental health benefits from nature contact. Sci Rep 14, 6705 (2024).
Piff, P. K. et al. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(6), 883–899.
Haidt, J. (2000). The positive emotion of elevation. Prevention & Treatment, 3(1), Article 3c. And Haidt, J. (2003) Elevation and the positive psychology of morality. In C. L. M. Keyes & J. Haidt (Eds.), Flourishing: Positive psychology and the life well-lived (pp. 275–289). American Psychological Association.
Schnall, Simone; et a. (2010). "Elevation Leads to Altruistic Behavior". Psychological Science.
Brilliant piece. Even superficially ugly things can have a kind of beauty and awesomeness. It takes certain types of disposition to see these, however.
Not only from far above, but also through week-long travel in the Great Saharan Desert you can adjust the perspective ...