Rule #4: Be amazed by everything

Isn't it wonderful there is anything at all? Why is this so easy to forget?

What is a mood? Why do we have them? I’m in a low mood today, so it’s no surprise these questions are on my mind. I’d describe this mood as feeling disconnected from my people, my routines and my surroundings. Moods are frustrating when they’re not the ones we want to have. And it’s on days like today that rule #4 on my whiteboard is the most useful. Rule #4 is to be amazed by everything.

On days like today it’s a hard rule to follow. Much of me doesn’t want to be amazed. Everything feels worn out, stupid, clunky and ugly. I even feel that way about myself. But I know a mood is a kind of shifting lens. It’s something that passes, however slowly, but before it does it changes how I see and experience everything. This rule reminds me that how I feel about the world is not the world. It’s mostly my perception, but some moods make it harder to remember this fact.

Over the years I’ve collected a long list of quotes about feeling wonder. Which is the opposite of what I feel when I’m in a low mood. Keeping lists of quotes is a good habit for writers for many reasons, in part because it can help with writing essays like this one. Here are some wise wonder words:

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds.” -Ray Bradbury

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.” - Einstein

“Wisdom begins in wonder” -Socrates

“Expectation is one of the great sources of suffering. We try to direct the scripts in our heads and are miserable when we fail. We often wonder why things go better when we have no expectations.“ -Mary Morris

I didn’t want to read these quotes. But I did anyway. Why? I know our ability to predict the future is terrible. It’s wiser to become adaptable and resilient instead of trying to control everything. In this case the fates were on my side. After reading these quotes I felt about 7% better. I am 7% less in the stinky mood I was in. And I admit 3% of that was thanking my past self for having made this list of quotes in the first place. I didn’t plan on that bonus, but I’ll take any bonus I can get.

Now 7% doesn’t sound like much, but having any ability to shift your own mood, even 1%, is tremendous leverage. We never know when just a finger’s touch of effort will shift the momentum back in our favor. Forcing yourself to do things is rule #5, which I’ll write about next week. I also forced myself to take my dog for a long walk in town. And to no surprise, moving my body and changing my surroundings added another 10%. And there you go. 7% becomes 17% and then it’s a whole new world. Or more accurately, a restored version of who I think I want to be right now.

Amazement comes from questions

In the excellent book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder, Dacher Keltner offers 9 wonders of everyday life we can choose to look for and experience:

1. Moral beauty

2. Collective effervescence

3. Nature

4. Music

5. Visual art

6. Spirituality

7. Religion

8. Death

9. Epiphany

This works as a good checklist for when I’m feeling low and am ready to move on from that feeling. It’s a reminder to look around and ask better questions about what I see. Questions like:

• Why is there anything at all? The universe is a mystery. No one knows what it is for or if it serves any purpose whatsoever. Isn’t that weird? I think so! And I get the privilege to sit here thinking and writing about it. And then to try to get you to think about it. Amazing! It’s all wonderfully bizarre and the fact that most people go about their day acting like existence is boring and no big deal amplifies my sense of wonder.

• What am I not noticing? How can I seek out moral beauty? How can I be humbled by nature? What music can I put on to see if it will give me 5% or 10% of the mood I want to have? Our brains can tune so much of the goodness of the world out, but with some questions and a few minutes of effort we can retune ourselves. Trying to see what I have forgotten to see is often restorative.

• How am I not myself?¹ Human memory is terrible, yet we insist on putting faith in having a singular and consistent story in our minds about who we are. At my age I have been sad, happy, inspired and depressed 100s of times. Right now I can choose to make up dozens of different stories about who I am depending on which memories I select and the framing I put them in. What do I choose today? Why am I making this choice? What new choice can I make? Alan Watts said, “ you're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.” And he was right. L.J. Chen wrote that “Cages aren't made of bars. They're made of thoughts, expectations, and fear.” If we feel our way into a cage, we can feel our way out of it too.

• Why do people ever get along? Anytime I’m in a tall building and look down on a highway I’m amazed that so many people can drive so fast so close to each other and mostly get along. Accidents are rare! Most people follow the rules most of the time! It always fills me with awe. That these systems of civilization work at all is astonishing. I have major complaints about our species but the collective actions of infrastructure we do so well and take for granted deserve more attention and respect.

• Even if I am sad, what is the best art about being sad? Our higher brains are a curse in many ways: we think too much. The upside is our brains allow us to make art. We can express every possible feeling of being a person in ways that will help other people who struggle with those feelings. We now have thousands of years of art exploring every feeling and every possible way to try and understand them. Catharcis, the beneficial effect of expressing strong emotions, is a habit we can all develop. Often when we hide from our feelings and repress them is when they do the most damage. Feeling sad, or lost, or anything, is energy and energy can be transformed. It can lead to renewal and inspiration, but only after we’ve embraced our feelings and worked through them.

I’m in a better mood for writing this. I hope you are in a better mood from reading it.

1. This phrase is from a film I love called I Heart Huckabees, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356721/