Wonderful WORLD

Remember the last time you felt a sense of awe? Perhaps you were staring into the night sky, being moved by music or standing on a mountain top viewing the wonders of nature.

While the source of what arouses these jaw-dropping, breathtaking, heart-swelling displays of awe in each of us is different, it’s indisputably a powerful emotion which allows us to be in the presence of something vast that transcends the mundane reality of life.

Though this mysterious sense of wonder and its effects have only recently been scrutinised by researchers, it’s quickly being characterised as the ultimate emotion, which when experienced, can change the course of life in profound and permanent ways.

Michelle “Lani” Shiota, associate professor of psychology