A New Approach to Awe

There’s a type of awe that surrounds the Jewish High Holy Days that is solemn, fearsome. People beating their chests, dressed in all white, lying on the ground.

During these 10 Days of Awe, God is said to be deciding who will and will not be inscribed in the Book of Life for the coming year. Even the word itself is tinged with dread: Etymologists traced “awe” back to the Middle English “ege,” which meant fear.

I grew up more religiously observant than I am now, so that awe used to feel easier to come by. At synagogue, reciting prayers, I was tuned into the divine, the otherworldly. More recently, I have spent these holidays curious about a different kind of awe, one that is more based in wonder than in fear.

In his book on the topic, aptly titled “Awe,” Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that the sensation is not mysterious or unknowable. Instead, he writes, it is an emotion that scientists can detect. Keltner and his team collected 2,600 accounts of awe from people around the world and created a taxonomy of activities that spark it.

After reading Keltner’s book, I sought out rabbis, priests, poets and artists and asked them how awe functions in their lives. Out of a dozen conversations, three themes emerged.

1. Experiencing awe, counter to what one might think, is about quantity and not only quality.

I had always associated awe with singular, standout experiences, like traveling out west and taking in the otherworldly colors of desert wildflowers. But my panel of awe experts focus on finding little nuggets of awe in their everyday routines.

Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, told me that awe is reinforcing: The more often she seeks it out, the more easily she finds it. Taylor lives in a farmhouse in Appalachia, and each morning on her walk to the mailbox, she finds what she calls “at least three miracles.” The roaring orange of the azaleas in her yard, the insistent song of a whippoorwill, the galloping of horses at feeding time. At this point, she said, “even a spider can knock me out.”

Indeed, Keltner’s research found that awe, unlike pleasure, isn’t subject to a hedonic treadmill. An activity that brings pleasure, like eating chocolate, may yield diminishing returns with every bite — but awe-inducing experiences stay just as powerful every time.

2. You can create tools to proactively find awe.

These folks treat awe as if it’s a muscle to develop, not an experience that washes over them.

A.J. Jacobs, author of “The Year of Living Biblically,” has a roster of awe-inducing habits. On the subway, he pretends the view in front of him is a “Where’s Waldo?” scene and zeros in on tiny and delightful details, like a toddler cupping her hand around a friend’s ear to share a secret. Jacobs wrote another book chronicling his quest to personally thank everyone responsible for his daily cup of coffee. Not just the barista, but also the truck driver who transported the beans and the woman who did pest control at the warehouse — 1,000 people in all, which made the coffee awe-inspiring.

Keltner’s book traces all kinds of activities that spark awe. Some were expected, like listening to music. But he also highlighted less obvious ones, including what he calls “collective effervescence,” the joy of doing something in a crowd, like marching or moshing.

3. Looking around for awe can change the way you interact with other people.

“I try to remember that wondering about another person is a path toward wonder,” Rabbi Sharon Brous told me. “I want to be carried away by the human experience, by grief and by love.”

She told me about a day when she helped a congregant with the devastating burial of a child, then rushed to a hospital where her sister-in-law was giving birth. As she cradled the newborn, Brous realized she had dirt under her fingernails from the cemetery. She was awed by the way life and death bump up against each other — and by the fact that people invited her into these intimate moments.

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• Russian provocations in Europe have prompted alarm in capitals there, with officials worried that Moscow is stepping up its antagonism of Europe as U.S. support recedes.

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THE SUNDAY DEBATE

Last week, Trump stood before the U.N. General Assembly and asked, “What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Has the U.N. lost relevance?

Yes. For decades, the United States and other great powers have ignored the U.N. in favor of militarization and fossil fuels. “The dark reality is that the U.N. is heading for the same fate as the League of Nations,” Michael Roberts writes for Counterfire.

No. The U.N. was never designed to bring the world to eternal peace, but to prevent great powers from going to war with one another. “It suits the mighty to use the U.N. as their scapegoat,” Bloomberg’s Andreas Kluth writes.

FROM OPINION

Trump is using Tylenol to blame mothers for their children’s autism because it’s easier than building a society that can support people with special needs, Jessica Grose writes.

“Awake” by Jen Hatmaker: In 2020, Jen Hatmaker was in bed next to her husband of 26 years when she heard him voice texting his girlfriend, “I just can’t quit you.” And that, as she puts it in her brave and irreverent memoir, was “the end of life as I know it.” Hatmaker, a Christian women’s influencer and best-selling author, had built a brand around her enviable domestic sphere. Here, she dismantles the facade while reinforcing the parts that sustain her, and also looks back on the strict evangelical upbringing that shaped her. “The book is a full-throated praise song to the body,” our reviewer wrote, “its wisdom, its patience, its trustworthiness, even when society and religion say the opposite.”

This week’s subject for The Interview is the actor Sean Penn, who stars in Paul Thomas Anderson’s politically charged thriller “One Battle After Another.” Like the movie, Penn is good at stirring up strong feelings — in his acting, his humanitarian work and his occasional forays into gonzo journalism. Where does that impulse come from? We talked about it when we met at his home in Malibu earlier this month.

There’s a quote I saw that your mom, the actress Eileen Ryan, gave to Woody Allen. You were working with Woody on “Sweet and Lowdown,” and he said something to the effect of, He didn’t quite get you. And your mom said to Woody, “The thing you need to understand about Sean is that he’s just embarrassed at having had a happy childhood.”

[Laughs.] It’s true, I had a very happy childhood. Psychiatrists have been pushing, pushing, trying to find that capital-T trauma in my childhood. It’s not there. I made every demon door in my life as a young adult and forward. I did it myself. My parents were great — loving family, great brothers, and it was surfing and the ocean every day. I’ve never been embarrassed about that. I feel lucky as hell about that. I was confused for a long time. Why did I want to walk through all the fires I built, and maybe I still sometimes do? But it had nothing to do with my childhood.

In the book “Sean Penn: His Life and Times,” by Richard T. Kelly, which was published about 20 years ago, people close to you refer to you as having real anger inside. Where does that anger come from?

Look around. I love humanity. My problem is humans. You go to the market, and this person who’s at the register was not really listening when they were taught how to use it, and they’re struggling with that while they’re extending a personal conversation with the customer in front of you. You know that’s not how life’s supposed to be. There’s supposed to be an experience of professionalism. You get on an airplane and a steward —

What are you talking about?

Incompetence drives me out of my [expletive] mind! It triggers me on a level you can’t imagine. I start to equate my soul with a volcano.

Read more of the interview here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE