awe -- take time out to experience it, it's even good for you!

[Darren Dirt]

https://71republic.com/2018/03/05/are-you-getting-enough-awe-in-your-experiential-diet/

Awe lies at the intersection between understanding and bewilderment. It is neither and it is both.

Overcome at once by immensity, power, mortality and beauty, the reality of our insignificance and lack of anything more than the slightest influence upon the universe becomes impossible to ignore.

There is a kind of grasp of the real situation that comes with awe that is at once true and immeasurable.

Though still understudied, there is an emerging science of awe. This research does not presume to reduce the experience to its essence (a futile exercise if ever there was one). Rather it seeks to describe the effects the experience has upon us. It turns out, as one might expect, that awe is pretty darn good for us.

For one thing it alters our sense of time, effectively slowing things down and bringing us into the present moment. Experiencing awe also increases empathy and altruism by enhancing our sense of interconnectedness.

Perhaps a little awe would put us on the road to placing things back into something closer to the proper perspective.

With spring approaching the opportunities for experiencing awe will, as they do every year, literally be bursting from the ground. So do yourself a favor; take a walk in the forest, climb a nearby hill or mountain to take in the view, or visit the desert and watch how even in the harshest environments life can do beautiful things with the scarce resources.

[Mr. Analog]

I'm in awe that we were able to photograph a black hole for the first time AND just how mind-bendingly far away it actually was, in a part of space we previously thought was empty not so long ago but actually filled with galaxies and stars. The photographing of which was accomplished by an array of telescopes roughly the size of the western hemisphere put together... Mind blowing.

To paraphrase; space is big, you won't believe how unbelievably big space is. You may think its a long way to the chemist's but that's peanuts compared to space.

It's good to stop and smell the roses once in a while and be impressed by this old universe put in front of us, or not, I mean it's a choice after all.