Tonight We Choose Awe

Movie Night - 5pm Pacific!

I don’t need to tell you that the world feels like a lot right now. Politics, climate, the general fog of hopelessness that seems to seep in no matter how many times you put your phone down. Some weeks the despair feels like the default setting.

So tonight, we’re doing something about it. Not by looking away from the hard things, but by deliberately reaching for the one emotion research suggests can actually loosen their grip on us - AWE.

If you’ve spent any time in this world, you’ve probably encountered Dacher Keltner, the UC Berkeley psychologist who has spent three decades building the science of awe. His findings are kind of staggering. When we experience awe - that spine-tingling sense of being in the presence of something vast, something beyond our current understanding - measurable things happen in the body. Keltner’s lab has found that awe quiets the brain’s default mode network, which is the region tied to self-referential thinking, rumination, and that anxious loop of me, my problems, my fears. In his words, awe makes the self goes quiet. The ego shrinks. He calls it the “small self” effect - and it turns out that feeling small, in this particular way, is enormously freeing.

And, there’s more! Awe appears to activate the vagus nerve, nudging the body out of fight-or-flight and into a calmer, more connected state. Keltner’s research has even linked awe experiences to lower inflammation and a greater sense of being part of something larger than ourselves. It is basically a reset button for a nervous system stuck in overdrive - and the best part is you don’t need a handful of magic mushrooms or a trip to the Grand Canyon to press it.

Tonight we’re watching Queen of the Trees, a documentary about a single fig tree in the Kenyan savanna and the astonishing web of life that depends on it. I’ve only seen the trailer so far, but I think it’s going to get us to the kind of vastness Keltner is talking about.

We’ll meet up at 5pm Pacific on Kosmi - link is below for all paying members of The Hope Circuit. See you tonight!