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Composed by Al Stewart, PhD
This is an edited – by me – transcript of a radio program on Australia’s Radio National. Which was entitled ‘Three Men and a Feeling: Awe on Life Matters’. Broadcast on 14 November 2017.
The tenor of the conversation interested me and may you too. For it provides a perspective of what may underlie the foundation of conscious connecting with anyone with whom we encounter in our daily lives. What difference could this make if it became widely adopted among we humans of every background? A tall order?! And yet, and yet, is it worth disseminating and promoting by people who recognise and practice this ‘awesome’ manner of interacting in everyday life?
The three people in the conversation were facilitator Michael Mackenzie, psychologist Andrew Fuller and educator John Hendry. They were discussing what it is to feel awe and its sister feeling – wonder.
After a brief introduction about feelings of awe when in nature, the subject moved to finding awe in everyday life:
Well to open yourself up to awe is to enable yourself to be mentally healthy. And one of the places where we can all find awe is in conversations with other people. If you stop and you truly listen to people, particularly people who think differently from yourself, it can be quite a life changing experience. Or meeting people whose circumstances are entirely different than your own. And just spending some time considering what life might look like from their point of view. In understanding their perspective on life you’ll often come away with a sense of a very different one about your understanding of the world. You don’t necessarily have to follow that footstep, or agree with it. That doesn’t matter. But just some times taking the time to get some glint of understanding of it makes an incredible difference.
And just being prepared to do that. Because we live in a world that often wants to rapid fire answers. And that means we lose that reflective sense of conversation. So one of the easiest ways to be really awed in life is to become a better conversationalist and a better listener.
(Which is quite different from the notion of ‘shock and awe’ and being overwhelmed by the power that other people have over you. Which is antithetical to the positive aspect of awe being considered here. This is a gross misunderstanding of the power of awe).
In a positive sense you can attribute it to a sense of curiosity. Because unless you are prepared to investigate a circumstance or a place or a person’s thinking – if you are not prepared to be open to the idea that they may change you – you won’t be changed.
That’s true and you need to invest. And that is really interesting as it means that you need to take the time to appreciate what others are saying, listen with an appreciative mind, so an open mind rather than a closed mind.
And it’s like you are in awe when someone sings something beautiful or plays something. You just think that is something that just touched me in a particular way.
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