It’s been awhile. Almost two years, in fact.
This is not unusual for me. I’m late; I’m early. I’m sending a friend too many texts; I’ve not reached out to them in weeks. I’ve kept a blog for three years, and this was my third post.
The good news? I will not be blowing up your inbox. I do commit to writing more or less monthly for the next year though. I plan to publicly explore my efforts to improve my time management and how these efforts intersect with my efforts to live a meaningful life. I might even slap these explorations up on Substack instead of confining them to my website. I love a good experiment.
Last week, I heard Dachner Keltner interviewed on the podcast, Hidden Brain. Keltner is a psychology professor at UC Berkley and the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center. He was discussing his new book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and how it Can Transform Your Life.
Keltner conducted lots of experiments on the effects of awe on the individual. He found that one result is a diminished sense of self. Moments of awe remind us of the brevity of our lifespans and of how infinitesimal we are. Awe places us in better relation to the world at large because we are reminded of our profound interdependence. We know intellectually that there is no me without you, no you without me—awe gifts us an embodied sense of this truth. As Keltner said in the episode, “Awe is the great engine of a systems view of the world.”
First, I think I’ve never felt so seen. All of those hours spent lounging on a rock beside the river, drunk on wonder? As important to my soul and to my community as the hours I’ve spent in mediation, or the hours I spent driving around Georgia “curing” votes.
I’ve known in my gut that this was true, but I’ve never said these words aloud. Such an admission seemed the flightiness of a daydreamer, a woman with such “time blindness” she posts to her blog less than once a year. But these acts, in fact, are interdependent, inseparable: connecting to something larger than one’s self; cultivating the capacity to hold this sense of connection for longer periods of time; acting to make this felt connection more present in the world.
I also realized as I listened to Keltner that I feel less awe these days than I once did. Climate change, divisive politics. I live in Atlanta, so there’s no easily accessible, National Park vista—a shortcut to awe even in Keltner’s experiments. The area where I live has a lot of crime; I hear gunshots most nights. I no longer teach preschool or work with infants, meaning no more vicarious wonder. I still often sit by a creek, but the water stinks and the bottom is coated with orange gunk. My creekside meditation these days isn’t awe so much as this too, this too belongs, this too is holy. Awe once arrived unbidden, regularly interrupting my days with grace and profundity. I took the experience for granted.
So, I’ve been paying closer attention to the moments when I’m awe-struck. Courting them, even. This week, what got me was my kombucha.
In December of last 2023, I read an article by Tobias Rees in Noēma titled, “From the Anthropocene to the Microbiocene.” Rees explains that humans are multi-species ecosystems—we rely on all sorts of organisms in order to survive, and those organisms are dependent upon us too. He’s not just talking about the gut bacteria we nurture when we eat yogurt either. Archaea, fungi. Mammals wouldn’t have evolved without viruses’ ability to move genetic material between species; present-day, we rely on viruses to regulate our gut bacteria.
“Fathom this for a moment:” writes Rees, “For a virus, the human gut is a pond among many ponds. Some of these ponds are located in the tropical rainforest or in the savannah or in the middle of some city, but the human pond is located in Homo sapiens. Viruses teach us that we humans are really little more than a multi-species ecosystem among multi-species ecosystems — ponds among ponds.”
As I slipped the SCOBY into a fresh sweet tea bath to start another round of kombucha, I felt something close to the feeling I get when I’ve hiked all day to encounter one of those National Park vistas, or when I sit bedside with a dying friend. Awe. I don’t know what the hell is going on here. I have no idea what happens after I die. But I wouldn’t be around to experience life at all without the microscopic creatures comprising the weird, fleshy SCOBY I grew in my kitchen and all of their microscopic ancestors. What does that mean?? The question leaves me drunk with wonder.