Episode 9: Lessons from the Wonder Box: How Awe & Wonder Have the Power to Heal

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. On today's episode, host Allie Wagner digs into the Wonder Box, and fishes out some of your questions and musings about life, love, joy, and peace. We’ll discuss the healing power of wonder and awe – how it connects us to one another, the world around us, and something larger than ourselves. We’ll learn how awe improves our physiology, our communities, and our overall well-being. We’ll explore how we’re wired for it, and how it propels our evolution by putting us in a heightened state of consciousness. 

The Carousel of Happiness is a nonprofit arts & culture organization dedicated to inspiring happiness, well-being, and service to others through stories and experiences.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider visiting the Carousel of Happiness online (https://carouselofhappiness.org/), on social media (https://www.facebook.com/carouselofhappiness), or in real life; or consider donating (https://carouselofhappiness.app.neoncrm.com/forms/general-donation) to keep the carousel and its message alive and spinning 'round and 'round.

If you have a story to share, please reach out to Allie Wagner at outreach@carouselofhappiness.org

Special thanks to songwriter, performer, and friend of the carousel, Darryl Purpose (https://darrylpurpose.com/), for sharing his song, "Next Time Around," as our theme song.

Transcript

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. I’m your host, Allie Wagner. 

On our last episode, you learned about a new addition to the roof of the carousel. A Guy Pfiefer original, the Loverator, now spins atop the second story roof, and with it, spreads love, joy, and peace. We learned about the electromagnetic field of the carousel, the anatomy of the human heart, and the power of living a heart-centered life. 

On today’s episode, I go elbows deep into the Wonder Box, and fish out some of your questions and musings about life, love, joy, and peace. We’ll discuss the healing power of wonder and awe – how it connects us to one another, the world around us, and something larger than ourselves. We’ll learn how awe improves our physiology, our communities, and our overall well-being. We’ll explore how we’re wired for it, and how it propels our evolution by putting us in a heightened state of consciousness. 

Before we get started, I want to send some love to Kelly from Evergreen, Colorado who visited the carousel last week and signed our guest book. For those of you who haven’t been to the carousel yet, as you walk into the carousel house (that’s the 12 sided building that houses the carousel), on your left, you’ll see a friendly monk seal holding a guest book. We’ve had a guest book since we opened in 2010, and it’s always so fun to see what you guys write in there. But because I am horribly and unabashedly biased, I happened to notice a particular note in the guest book from Kelly. She wrote that she visited the carousel last week specifically because she heard this podcast. Kelly – reading your message gave me goosebumps. Thank you. It feels good to know that this podcast is having an impact on your lives. And you sharing that note made me feel more connected to my purpose, and to you, at least for a little bit somehow. So, thank you, thank you, thank you.

And, speaking of goosebumps, we’re going to talk about those today. What it means when we get them. And how it is related to our experience of wonder and awe. 

So, let us begin with today’s story.

GONG

When you enter the carousel, on the left-hand side of the gift shop, you’ll see a little wooden table with a couple of equally tiny chairs. Typically the table is covered in a seasonal table cloth of some kind. Hearts for valentines day, pumpkins for Halloween, that sort of thing. And on this table there are crayons and markers and little pieces of paper that are shaped like christmas trees, butterflies, flowers, etc. Depending on the season.

And next to the tiny table is a clear plastic box on the wall that we call the “Wonder Box.” We invite anyone who visits, whether you ride the carousel of not, to sit down at the tiny table, use the markers and crayons provided and ponder about what makes you wonder. And if you’d like, you can share your answer with us by putting it in the wonder box.

We’ve had the Wonder Box at the carousel since 2021 and we’ve gotten some pretty amazing answers. If you’re curious, next time you stop by, check out the paper mobiles hanging in the gift shop. You’ll see how visitors, young and old, answer the question “What makes you wonder?”

One of my favorites hangs directly in my line of vision when I’m working at the front desk. It’s written in little kid handwriting and it ask “Am I real?”

Did you just get goosebumps? I did.

And the Wonder Box was getting pretty full this week so I decided to take its contents home and go through it. See what I could learn from it. See what kind of episode I could make from it on the podcast.

First and foremost, I must say, I loved reading your handwriting. There is something special about reading someone’s handwriting. I think it’s the same as listening to a voice. With both, you get a sense of personality. A sense of uniqueness. Something you can’t quite get from reading text. Your handwriting gave me insights into who you are that I would have missed out on had we had you type into a tablet or computer. 

From your handwriting I could make some guesses about your age. Are you a child? Or an adult? From your handwriting I could see how your brain works. Particularly for the younger participants – I could see how you connected words in different combinations based on how they appeared on the page. From your handwriting, I could see how words sound to you in your head because of the way you spelled them out. Autocorrect is helpful, but in some ways, it feels like it is taking the human element out of written communication. And don’t even get me started on AI.

So, first and foremost, I loved reading your handwriting. It made me feel closer to you. Connected to you. It made you feel real to me. This week’s episode felt like a back and forth, it felt like a conversation. Because, through these little pieces of paper I got to know you. What you care about. What you wonder about.

I also loved how obvious patterns started to develop almost immediately. So, my highly scientific method of executing this project was this: I dumped out the contents of the Wonder Box on the floor of my office and started grouping the answers into little piles. For example, there was a pile of little papers for those of you wondering about nature or animals or the stars in the sky. Many of you wondered about the tooth fairy and mermaids and big foot. Also, there was much focus on all sorts of Santa-related logistics. You also wondered about music and democracy and kindness. Many of you were curious about rainbows and unicorns and, I’m sorry to say this dear cat loving listener, more of you wondered about dogs than cats. 

I learned you were curious about how things worked– things like snowmobiles and hot air balloons; cameras, motorcycles, trains, Blutooth.  

You tackled the deeper questions of our time – does the chicken come before the egg? If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound?

You were curious about life and death. Many of you wondered about your loved ones who have moved on. How are they doing? Where are they? Do they miss you?

You wondered about each other – if your daughter will grow up to be kind. What’s going on in your grandson’s imagination? You wondered what other people wonder about. You wondered about what other people see.

Many of you wondered about romantic love – Does he like me? Why doesn’t she want me? When will he propose? Why did Cam hold Miles’s hand not mine?

Because I was reading your handwriting, I know some of our youngest visitors pondered some of the deepest questions. How language was created, how the universe started. Little ones wondered about how babies were made, who the first human was, and where we go when we die. 

You wondered about the meaning of this human experience. Is this life just a beautiful dream? At the end of this journey, do we begin a new one or do we start over? Where do memories after we die?

Many of you wondered about god. The mountains. And skiing.

And, probably not surprising, you wondered why we all can’t love each other. How the world stays beautiful through evil. Why we can’t come together. You wondered when there will be peace.

But you also wondered how love could be so strong. What makes you a better person. How the heart transcends suffering and what makes us come alive. A very, very young participant wondered how people knew how to fall in love.

And speaking of love, a considerable stack of answers were all about love. I love you. Hi, I love you. Hola, I love you. Aida Loves Zhannel. I heart u. Love. You drew little hearts. You love Lucas. We love each other. All you need is love. Dios es amor. You wrote love in big bold letters. You told us to choose love always. To love each other. You love your dads and your moms. You love your friends. You encouraged us to love ourselves. You told us love is the key. You spell love with Os and Us. You symbolize it with a heart. Over and over. I love you. I love you. Love. Someone loves Kiera. All John wants and needs is love. Gia loves her dad. Mom loves Sequoia. Someone loves muffins.

And these piles helped me see patterns. These piles helped me see how similar, yet different we are. We might be unique individuals, but there are common threads in wonder that unite us all. And we’re not alone in this little carousel community. Turns out, our answers reflect similar patterns to what researchers discovered when they interviewed 26,000 people from 26 countries about awe. We’ll talk more about that study later in the podcast.

But first, what is wonder? What do we mean when we talk about wonder? 

The word wonder is defined as:

• a cause of astonishment or admiration;
• a quality of exciting amazed admiration; 
• rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience.

The word comes from the latin word miraculu which refers to “anything wonderful beyond human power. A supernatural event.” A miracle, if you will.

And many a philosopher, scientist, and writer have contemplated the concept of wonder or states of wonder. 

Einstein said of wonder, “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 have closed.”

Philosopher Aristotle said “wonder is a vehicle used to escape ignorance.”

Theologian Thomas Aquinas said, “poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.”

Wonder is a complex human emotion that seems to be equal parts attention and contemplation; newness and surprise; and awe and astonishment. When we wonder, we direct our attention somewhere. We might wonder, like many of you did, about how the seasons change. This requires our attention. This requires our focus. This requires us to notice. When we wonder about something we contemplate it, we meditate upon it.

Wonder also has an element of newness or surprise to it. That’s what the philosophers and scientists were getting at. When something is new we are curious about it. When something surprises us we want to learn more. This beginner’s mind mentality has propelled human evolution and innovation as each of us explores our own curiosities and interests.

Then there’s the element of awe and astonishment. This is where the Latin root comes in. When we are in awe and astonishment we are experiencing something beyond what we previously thought possible. According Dacker Kelt-ner, a UC Berkeley professor and researcher, “awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”

And, it turns out, my little Wonder Box experiment reflects very similar results to the ones Keltner and his associates got when they interviewed 26,000 people from 26 different countries about the complex human emotion of “awe.”

You can check out the full results in Keltner’s book, “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.” After analyzing all of the responses from participants, Keltner and his fellow researchers identified what they called the “8 Wonders of Life.” These are 8 areas of life that evoke a state of awe in human beings.

One of the most popular answers to the questions researchers asked about awe was a bit surprising for Keltner. Number one most common wonder of everyday life was not nature, it was not god, it was not life and death. The most common wonder that put people readily in states of awe was actually something called “moral beauty.” Moral beauty is witnessing courage, kindness, and strength in overcoming adversity in others. I’m going to say that again. The number one thing – across 26 countries, rich and poor, big and small – the number one thing to put human beings in a state of awe is watching other humans display courage, kindness, and strength in overcoming the odds. 

How many of you have felt that way about the carousel? How many of you heard Scott’s personal story and felt awe or astonishment? How many of you heard those first couple of episodes on the podcast and felt like he accomplished something beyond what you previously thought possible?

Yeah, me too.

Researchers also noted that human beings experience awe when they engage in what’s called collective effervescence – the feeling of energy and harmony when people are engaged in a shared purpose. You experience collective effervescence when you’re at public gatherings moving in unison with one another. Think football games and political rallies. Yoga classes, dance clubs. When you go to church and sing. This is the second most common way to experience awe.

Then there’s nature. When we spend time in nature we feel connected to the ecosystem. We feel connected to this earth. And this isn’t just hippy dippy stuff. We now know nature changes our neurophysiology. The sound of water, like a babbling brook or the ocean waves crashing on the beach, actually activates the vagus nerve, putting us into a parasympathetic state. Chemical compounds present in sweet smelling flowers boost our immune system. Our bodies are wired to respond to nature.

Visual art puts us in states of awe. Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Van Gogh’s Starry night. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. How many of you love the carousel because it's a work of art? Because it is visually pleasing.

Music also puts us in a state of awe. Many of you had questions or comments about the band organ. That signature sound. What does it remind you of? Does it trigger a memory? Music has the power to transport us to different times and places. It connects us to our childhood, to our memories. And also each other. 

Musical composer Julia Perry wrote, “music has a unifying effect on the peoples of the world, because they all understand and love it…and when they find themselves enjoying and loving the same music, they find themselves loving one another.”

How many of you made instant friendships in high school because you liked the same music? Music is a common language. Music is a visceral language.

Researchers also found that we experience wonder when we have epiphanies or “aha moments.” When we are exposed to big ideas that challenge our beliefs. This can cause human beings to wonder.

We also experience wonder in mystical or spiritual experiences. Many of you wondered about god. About the meaning of life. About your purpose on this planet.

And lastly, the 8th wonder of everyday life – life and death itself. Many people, myself included, have experienced states of wonder when confronted with the death of a loved one or in witnessing the birth of a human being.   

It turns out awe is good for us. Actually, it’s not just good for us, it’s life giving. Human beings are wired to experience awe. It is part of our genetic makeup. We crave it. 

Awe stimulates the vagus nerve, and it deactivates the default mode network in our brains. The default mode network is the part of our brain that is only focused on ourselves. When it is turned off, like it is during meditation, psychedelic trips or in states of awe, we lose a sense of our own selfishness and connect with each other. This allows us to make better decisions for our communities, not just ourselves.

Remember those goosebumps I got at the top of the show? Well, that tingly sensation that makes your hair stand up on end…that is actually a physiological symptom of awe in mammals. So are tears and chills.

When the hair of mammals stands up on end, like it does when you have goosebumps, it’s actually about our connection to each other. The bodily function has its roots in animals whose fur would puff out in order to keep warm together in the cold. This communal connection against shared threads is how mammals like us have evolved. 

Awe has the capacity to do the same thing for us that psychedelics or gratitude can do. It rewires our brains allowing us to become healthier human beings and better community members.

Awe connects us to something larger than ourselves. Awe connects us to our ecosystem, so we are motivated to protect it. Awe gets us out of our own heads and into our communities. Awe changes our brain chemistry. Awe heals our bodies.

And, as researchers found out, awe is free. You can experience it walking in the woods, visiting a museum, or reading a book to your child.

If you’d like to incorporate some more awe into your everyday life, you can start taking what Keltner calls “awe walks.” Go for a walk. Ideally in nature. And look for things that amaze you, both big and small. The leaf on the tree. The squirrel in the grass. The laughing baby on the swing.

Or you can come to the carousel. Learn about Scott’s story, examine the beauty of the carvings, or sing along to the band organ. 

And when you’re done, perhaps, sit at the little wooden table on the left with some markers or crayons and reflect on what makes you wonder. 

Because it could just change your life.

In the meantime, take care. Be well. And, as we like to say at the Carousel of Happiness, “don’t delay joy.” And we’ll see you next time around.