Not shock but awe

The winter weather cometh.

Cold.
Dark.
Damp. 

Makes for a miserable combination. 

One can escape to warmer and sunnier places.  But, there's one catch: Covid hasn't gone away.  You can run but cannot hide is more apt here than in many other contexts.

There is only one way out--through!

So, what can one do?

Do things, observe the world, that will fill you with awe.

Psychologist Dacher Keltner, the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley, has spent years studying the beneficial effects of awe on our physical, mental and emotional well-being. “It makes us curious rather than judgmental. It makes us collaborative. It makes us humble, sharing and altruistic. It quiets the ego so that you’re not thinking about yourself as much.” It also calms the brain’s default mode network and has been shown to reduce inflammation. In other words, he says, don’t underestimate the power of goose bumps.

What is this feeling of awe about?

You see something that you perhaps haven't noticed before, and you realize there's a lot more to it than you previously had thought. It's almost like you're peering into a world that you hadn't seen before. Something is opening up to you. ...

You can be looking at something grand, like the view at the top of a hill, or something tiny, like a pink stripe on a flower. And you may think, wow, how on earth did that stripe get there?  

What's special about this?

It helps us realize that there is a vastness that is bigger and beyond one self.  Our problems begin to fade into the background.

That feeling of awe triggers more within us:

In turn, several studies found that experiencing awe can make us kinder, more generous people. For example, participants who briefly stared at tall, beautiful trees — as opposed to staring at a building — were more likely to help a stranger who dropped their belongings. As Anderson says: “My hope is that awe can be an emotion that we leverage for the greater good of our communities, of our country and of people around the world.”

I hope so too.