• Graduates should make this summer one filled with moments of freedom and experiences that may help them find moments of awe.
• Jon Haidt, argues that “Awe can transform people and reorient their lives, goals, and values…Awe–inducing events may be one of the fastest and most powerful methods of personal change and growth.”

​A research trip to Seville, Spain, in graduate school introduced me to the wonderful world of flamenco. A few weeks ago, I had the chance to revisit this spectacular art form when I saw Noche Flamenca in New York. The show was mesmerizing. The singing, dancing, clapping, and rhythms were both familiar and foreign, and I was in a state of awe, feeling the beats of the music and being captivated by the beauty of a dozen artists on stage.

I didn’t anticipate this moment at all, and I can’t stop thinking about the raw passion, emotion, and humanity the performers presented on stage. I have had moments of awe before, such as when I saw the Milky Way galaxy shining above me in the Negev Desert in Israel as I climbed Masada.

But the moments that have had the greatest impact on me were ones that were total surprises and involved a moment of deep humanity. When I saw the sun rise over the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, for instance, I was in total shock and awe and stood there in the open plaza proudly thinking that the Third Reich failed to wipe my people off the face of the earth.

I share this story about my evening with Noche Flamenca because, as a teacher, it is central to the final lesson that I want to give to students who are members of the high school Class of 2025: Spend this summer finding and experiencing awe. It will anchor and remind you of your purpose on this earth.

Life is difficult as an undergraduate. I witness the intensity and stress students face firsthand on an almost daily basis. Two decades ago, my college experience was much simpler and straightforward. In today’s era, many of our high school graduating seniors will enter into a stressful and unendingly tense, politicized collegiate world that has all but forgotten fun and the joy of authentic learning and self-discovery.

When students arrive on campus in the fall, they will have to confront extreme rancor and social upheaval, intense and divisive politics that are tearing the nation apart, a rapidly changing economy, the impact of artificial intelligence on our learning, omnipresent cancel culture, social media, misinformation, and potentially challenging college classes.

So, before heading into this higher education mess, I believe that high school graduates would benefit greatly from enjoying their downtime, taking a pause from the stressors of school, and thinking about a bigger world and their role in it beyond grades, social media, and politics.  

To do this, I urge our graduates to make this summer one filled with moments of freedom and experiences that may help them find moments of awe, which “give us a sense of vastness, seeming much larger than us and the things we are used to, whether physically or metaphorically.”

Fortunately, awe can be found and triggered by many potential stimuli. While it is often assumed that to experience awe one must see something grand, “whether a stunning landscape, an intense religious experience, or a cloud-skimming skyscraper,” one doesn’t need to experience something larger than life and extreme.  Awe exists in daily life when we open our minds and eyes to it and actively search for it.

Awe can be found in the ordinary and the mundane. Research has confirmed that often overlooked moments of daily living, like “listening carefully to a thunderstorm, watching documentaries, marveling at the human dramas in a city, or watching the dusk sky turn to night,” can lead to awe.

University of California, Berkeley professor Dacher Keltner discovered that the most common triggers of awe are “nature, music, visual design, and moral beauty (when we witness people helping other people).” But many others can be powerful and one can experience them too, such as “collective effervescence” (what fans madly cheering together in a soccer stadium feel), spiritual experiences, epiphanies (when we learn something unexpected that changes our worldview), and, of course, births and deaths, life’s beginnings and endings.”

The research on awe suggests that having moments of awe can be invaluable. These moments are experiences that can change the way we see and think about the world: “people…feel small, powerless, passive, and receptive.”

Psychologist Dacher Keltner, working with fellow professor Jon Haidt, argues that “Awe can transform people and reorient their lives, goals, and values…Awe-inducing events may be one of the fastest and most powerful methods of personal change and growth.”

Specifically, they contend that, “awe may focus our attention on the here and now, but research indicates that it also prompts us to think in more self-transcendent ways, shifting our focus from inward concern to an outward sense of universality and connectedness.”

When we experience awe, we are calmer, kinder, more creative, and less likely to cheat.  Awe helps rein in “the ego and makes us feel more connected to the earth and to other creatures,” and this may also make us less aggressive and intolerant of differences and open, along with promoting greater empathy and sympathy toward others.

Moments of awe are associated with physical health benefits, including “calming down our nervous system and triggering the release of oxytocin, the ‘love’ hormone that promotes trust and bonding.”

Psychological benefits also emerge from moments of awe in a world where there is unending worry and an unhealthy fixation on how we present ourselves and how we are perceived by others.

As Keltner notes, “We are at this cultural moment of narcissism and self-shame and criticism and entitlement,” but awe helps correct that because these moments of beauty and perspective enable us to “realize our place in the larger context, our communities.”

The positive impact of experiencing awe surely contributes to some of the societal benefits of religion in secular areas of life, like mental health and education. While not all awe-inspiring moments stem from faith – such as my experience with Flamenco Noche – most organized religion has as part of its design the inculcation of awe or reverence for things that are viewed as expressions of divinity in human life. Whether it be reverence for the peace felt during religious worship, awe at the vastness and beauty of God’s creations, or humble astonishment at the miracle of life, religious life and teachings bring us to awe-inspiring moments that benefit not only people of faith, but anyone who they interact with (whether religious or not).

My Jewish faith and my practice of Judaism have been a huge catalyst for finding my own awe. My faith has helped me realize awe and has helped provide me with much-needed context and perspective to appreciate particular experiences, from witnessing the birth of my son to being humbled by the majesty of hiking in a redwood forest near Big Basin along the coast of California. Some of my very first memories of moments of awe came from services in my childhood synagogue in Philadelphia. I vividly remember one fall day at the part of the service where we had finished the public reading of the Bible – the Torah service – and the congregation all sang in unison as we closed that section of the service. During our prayer, the sun broke through the clouds and lit up our sanctuary’s large wall of stained glass, and we were flooded with light. I felt small, insignificant, and connected to something far larger and more profound than myself. While not absolutely necessary, my own religious traditions, values, and outlook toward life have profoundly helped me find awe in so many facets of life subsequently, and I am deeply appreciative.

As high school graduates begin their post-grad summers, my advice to incoming college first years is quite simple: be open, be curious, try new experiences, and make choices that are a bit different from your norm.

Be engaged with the world around you, be open to religious experiences, join a faith-based group, engage with your neighbors and your community, and pause to see the world around you, offline and outside your digital devices.

Students may manage to have a moment of awe, which will give them a critically valuable perspective and comfort this fall when they will have to confront a divisive and increasingly difficult, complex world. Students will understandably and undeniably become immersed in the pettiness, emptiness, and conflict-laden minutiae of everyday life. Having a recent moment of awe will help them mature with larger, more nuanced perspectives, to better prepare for the intense challenges they will shortly face in college.

While awe is certainly not the solution to all stress and divisive situations, having experiences of awe helps ground us and keep us focused on the bigger picture of life, and that is exactly what Noche Flamenca did for me in this moment of deep anti-Semitism.

Hopefully our nation’s graduating high school students will take this advice and embrace the idea that awe is everywhere if we are open to it for, as Einstein remarked, “He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”