Awe is an underrated emotion. Other emotions tend to excite the nervous system while awe calms it down, improving your body’s regulation and baseline functions. Awe is uniquely allocentric and focuses you on things beyond yourself. In this way awe simultaneously grounds you in reality while taking care of your body.

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I believe in divine beauty. I don’t know how I would define other than the objective aesthetic that speaks to the part of us which existed before we were born. That’s not a very actionable definition but I haven’t felt the need for a better one. Divine beauty is obvious when you see it and it needs no justification.

Children and animals understand it instinctively. They’ll pause in a ray of sunlight, basking in its warmth. They’ll watch the clouds pass slowly overhead, or listen to the rustling of trees in the wind.

Divine beauty is often experienced through awe and perhaps that’s why awe is such a powerful emotion. In its milder forms it puts us at ease and when we experience it in its unadulterated form it humbles us with the presence of something greater than ourselves. Maybe divine beauty is, definitionally, that which inspires awe.

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I believe great art reminds us of divine beauty. Michelangelo shows us the supple perfect forms of the human body carved out of everlasting stone. Single sentences from great writers like C.S. Lewis can express truths we hold in our hearts with such clarity that it moves us to tears. Given 100x the amount of words we could not have expressed our own souls more clearly.

In the post-modern world we’re obsessed with deconstructing truth and highlighting the relativism, nuance, and ugliness of the world. We reject universalism and seek to subvert expectations to reinforce the perception of an unpredictable and uncaring universe. This sort of art can be intriguing and stimulating but it’s almost never inspiring. It’s often used to convey a message but the message behind the message is almost always one of despair. It doesn’t move us the way a melody dreamt up by Mozart, echoing across centuries, reminds us of the divine plan we find ourselves in.

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Kids remind us of the awe-inspiring nature of things we view as mundane. The big things are easy to notice: towering mountains visited when hiking and skiing, vast beautiful oceans, and massive buildings with intricately carved facades. But awe is found in the small things too like the way the sun sparkles on the surface of rough water, the way the bees and butterflies dance around flowers, the smell of spring or the sound of warm food sizzling in the morning. Even the silence of an early morning can evoke a feeling of awe. There’s beauty in the stillness.

It’s for this reason I find it unlikely for a civilization to grow to greater heights if it doesn’t embrace children. If we are to become a space- faring civilization it’ll be because of the children who watched with wide eyes as we went to the moon also because they remind us that we should be reaching for the heavens in the first place.

I suspect the best relationships are like this too. Initially driven by attraction and excitement but sustained through awe and appreciation for your partner. Awe for how they think, how they nurture, and even how they grow and change over time. I’ve always been attracted to women who excel in the things that I don’t and move through the world in ways that are different from my own. I aspire for a relationship where even in old age I’m in awe of the their approach to life.

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