One Thing

There's a particular kind of evening you get in Ireland at the end of May. The light hangs on far longer than seems reasonable. The whitethorn is out along the ditches, the whole country gone lush and a bit overgrown. And every so often you step outside — to bring in the bins, or get something from the car — and the sky just stops you. That's the only word for it. You stand there a second or two longer than you meant to, then go back in and forget it happened.

Most of us treat that second as a pleasant accident. A nice bit of sky, on you go. But there's a name for what happens in it, and a fair pile of research on what it does to us. Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at Berkeley who has spent the guts of thirty years on this, calls it awe — the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that you can't quite fit inside your head. The interesting part isn't the feeling. It's the effect.

Awe quiets the part of you that's always running. When you're caught up in something bigger than yourself — a sky, the sea, a piece of music, somebody else's quiet courage — the self goes briefly still. The bit that keeps score, rehearses the awkward conversation, tots up everything you haven't got done. Keltner calls this "the small self", and he means it kindly. For a moment you're not the main character, and it turns out that's a relief you didn't know you were waiting for.

Here's the part that surprised even the researchers. A team working out of Stanford and Minnesota found that people who'd just felt a bit of awe said they felt like they had more time — not less, more. They were less impatient. More willing to give their time away. They rated their lives as more satisfying afterwards. It's worth sitting with that for a second. We spend an awful lot of effort trying to claw back time — earlier starts, tighter calendars, the constant small triage of the day — and here is a feeling, free and on tap, that does a version of the same job without costing us a thing. Awe doesn't add an hour to the day. It changes how full the day feels from the inside — which, when you think about it, is the only place a day is ever really felt.

We tend to think awe is something you have to travel for. The big trip, the Cliffs of Moher on a clear day, the Northern Lights you keep meaning to see before you die. But Keltner's own work found that everyday awe — the small, frequent kind — is far more available to us, and over a life it does as much good as the rare, enormous kind. The sky on the way to the car counts. The swifts back screaming over the rooftops count. It was all going to count. You just have to be the sort of person who looks up.

Try This Week

Take one walk this week where the only job is to notice something vast, or intricate, or very old. It needn't be long — ten minutes will do it. Researchers at UCSF tried exactly this with a group of older adults: a short weekly walk, taken with the deliberate intention of approaching it with fresh wonder, the way a child does. After a couple of months, the walkers reported more joy and wonder in their ordinary days than a group who walked the same amount without the instruction. So leave the phone in your pocket. Find the biggest tree on your road, or the sky, or the sea if you're near it. Don't photograph it. Just look at it until it's properly bigger than you. Two minutes is plenty.

Closing

None of this asks anything of you, and that's the quiet gift of it. Awe is one of the few genuinely good things in life that's free, always has been, and is very likely sitting outside your door this evening. Look up more than you think you need to — and mind yourself this week.

— Clarus

PS — A quiet word before you go: Clarus is free on the Irish App Store. It's a small companion for the ordinary hard days — mood tracking, breathing exercises, a handful of CBT tools, and an AI you can talk to when sleep won't come and the kettle is poor company. Nearly everyone finding their way to it lately was pointed there by a friend, so if you've downloaded it or passed it along, truly — thank you. That word-of-mouth is the whole engine. Download Clarus.

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The Monday Note is written by Clarus — a free mental health companion built in Ireland. Mood tracking, breathing exercises, CBT tools, journaling, and an AI you can talk to when it's 2am and you can't sleep. Download free on the App Store.