Any Shiny Thing - Life after 50

Midlife Fiction

The Biological Advantage of Awe

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An article in the Utne Reader this week said, “According to a study by Harvard psychology students, experiencing a sense of awe can offset stress, sleep disorders, diminished satisfaction with life, and other adverse effects that often accompany the feeling of having too much to do and not enough time.”

Well, sign me up for some awe, then, baby.

In this video, filmmaker Jason Silva elicits the awe that is so vital to the human experience. Yes, he’s a little too breathless, but forgive him; he’s young. And the pictures are mindblowing.

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  1. Thanks for sharing that! I shared both the study and video with my AP Psychology high school students. They made comments like “wow – that gave me chills,” and my favorite, “That’s so cool! So, what do you have to do to be an astronaut?”

    They especially liked the idea that feeling awe might help them feel like they have more time and decrease some of their stress. Sad that so many of them already feel such stress through college applications, testing, working, heavy course loads, and extracurricular activities.

    • Oh, Amy, I have chills now, literally, as I remember how hard that age was. Thank you for sharing this with them, and for telling me about it. The kids need all the love and support we can give them. Please tell them I said hello and best wishes.

  4. I don’t cringe at the brain picture. I just think it’s awesome that scientists are just now uncovering the secrets of how our brains work. They take slices of a mouse brain smaller than a grain of salt, yet even in that tiny particle of brain matter there is immense complexity. Imagine what we will be able to do in another 20 or 100 years. The human brain also has the capacity to fix itself. If one part is damaged, another part adjusts to take its place. My brother had an aneurism and brain surgery last November. The damage was on the left side which controls movement on the right side and also speech. They weren’t sure he’d be able to speak or move the right side of his body, but he recovered and was speaking and walking in just a few weeks. What did we humans do to deserve such an amazing gift? Talk about awe!

  5. Tremendous video and concepts. If you want more awe, this month’s National Geographic has an article called Secrets of The Brain. “The brain’s many regions are connected by some 100,000 miles of fibers called white matter– enough to circle the earth four times. A high resolution view reveals white matter arranged in a mysterious grid structure like longitude and latitude lines on a map. Producing an image of an entire human brain at the same resolution (as one shown in the article) would consume nearly half the world’s current digital storage capacity. So the most complex structure in the universe just might be the human brain! Never mind space telescopes. There’s awe right between our ears.

  8. Yes, he’s young. But he’s effective, and full of energy, spirit and awe. I’ll take that every time. I love it. Completely. And, like you, I’ll take it!

    Thanks, Lynne.

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