How to flourish and connect in our age of anxiety and fragmentation

Mukilteo Beach, Mukilteo, Washington

While facebook, IG and other social media platforms have created more opportunities for connection, many are still left with feelings of loneliness, anxiety, meaninglessness and depression.

Six years later many are still tredging through the compounding social wreckage of COVID-19. Anyone who participated in a Zoom-based gathering such as a wedding, funeral or religious service knows how much is lost when we moved our in-person communities to on-line singleness. While the pandemic is over, many are still trying to reclaim the sense of peace and calm that they once had before the pandemic hit. The world is not the same and neither are we.

A favorite memory of mine while raising small children (we had 4 kids in 4 years!), was going to Mukilteo Beach. Mukilteo Beach isn't a lucious sandy, smooth beach, it's rocky and not the easiest to walk on and as my kids and I walked along the beach, I was always afraid someone was going to twist or break an ankle! Despite the rockiness and because of its rockiness, it was one of my kids favorite summer spots and so we would go often. Why did my kids love this beach? They spent hours and hours turning rocks over, looking for sealife. Every rock was a new adventure, it was a wonderful place for them to explore.

In 2003, Dacher Keltner and Jonathon Haidt published a review paper on the emotion of awe. "Awe opens us to changing our beliefs, allegiances and behaviors." When we feel the emotion of awe, we have greater social integration and we have a heighted sense of meaning. Awe is triggered by two simultaneous perceptions: first, that what you are looking at is vast in some way, and second, that you can't fit it into your existing mental structures. Awe can be triggered in many ways, but the beauty of nature is among the most reliable and accessible. My kids were experiencing the awe of nature as they turned rock after rock after rock over. My mom plays the piano beautifully and even after all my years of lessons, I am no where near her skill and talent. I am in awe when I hear her play the piano, I find it moving and inspiring.

As we spend more and more time on our phones and as technology stays central to our being, we are spending less time in nature experiencing awe. When we see a beautiful sunset, our first instinct is to pull out our phones to snap a picture so that we can post it somewhere. We do this instead of fulling taking in the breadth of the moment. While scrolling through Youtube, we can find endless inspiring videos of Niagra Falls, or the heroic deeds of others, nothing beats experiencing these things in person. And after you've been uplifted and moved from your Niagra Falls drone Youtube experience, your uplifting moving experience sours as you scroll down to the next video with somebody's rant about who knows what.

If we want awe to play a larger role in our lives, we have to make space for it. Learning to leave the AirPods at home and hear the wind and sounds of nature is a great place to start. You don't have to go on a hike or spend the day on the lake in or in the mountains to experience awe. Simply going for a walk on your lunch hour or walking a few loops of a local park sufice! Taking a break from audiobooks and podcasts will make room for awe inspiring moments in your life.

Learning to make room for awe can soothe anxieties and help us feel a deeper connection to ourselves and to others. We are able to relate to ourselves and to others when we feel the emotion of awe. With awe, we become more grounded, our confidences grow and we are able to enjoy and be more fully present in our lives.