Awe Makes Us Free

Last week, we explored something hard but essential: how to keep our minds free.

We talked about manipulation, propaganda, and the language of fear — and how easy it is to lose ourselves if we stop paying attention. But we also talked about how truth, memory, and compassion can guide us back.

This week, I want to take us somewhere quieter.

Not because the world has gotten easier,

but because sometimes the most radical thing we can do is pause.

To look up.

To marvel.

To remember what it feels like to be astonished.

Because awe — real, spacious, breath-catching awe — is one of the strongest forces we have for staying human.

When we stand under a vast sky,

when we remember how small we are — and how deeply connected —

we become harder to manipulate, harder to divide, and harder to control.

Awe makes us free.

So pour yourself a warm drink.

Let’s slow down together — and remember what makes this life worth protecting.

Awe isn’t always standing at the edge of a canyon.

Sometimes it’s right here in Canada, in January — minus twenty-five, your nostrils pinching tight from the cold. The sun somehow hot on your face even as everything sparkles in icy brilliance. Snow crunching underfoot like broken glass. Snow on branches standing stiff and bright. The sky so blue you feel like you could fall into it.

Then there’s March.

Still cold by southern standards, but here it feels like a holiday. Streams trickle under snowbanks. We shed our coats and lift our faces to the sun. Skiers in shorts, beers on patios — everything melting, absurd and glorious.

Sometimes awe is hearing a moose call across an Ontario swamp. Or standing under a sky so full of stars it almost hurts.

But it’s also inside a classroom.

When a kid sighs, “I wanted to keep reading.”

When two students who never spoke find tenderness in a small moment of sharing.

When a parent sees their child’s artwork and says, “I didn’t know they had this inside them.”

That’s awe too.

The astonishing reminder that life keeps surprising us.

Last summer I packed up my little car in Québec City — a tent, Buddy, and my camera — and headed east. To Newfoundland. To cliffs and skies and ocean.

I didn’t stay in hotels. I camped. Met strangers. Watched sunsets with them. Shared food, stories, stillness.

Camping slowed me down. Making food over fire. Setting up the tent. A rhythm that reminded me what I need: water, shelter, a glass of wine, a bit of music.

That’s all.

Sometimes I stayed in tiny motels. Rooms scrubbed clean by owners who’d lost their partners to illness but kept going. Places where the fish gets cleaned at the same table you eat your breakfast on.

One woman told me about her husband’s cancer as we drank coffee by the docks. Local cafés played Irish folk music. People smiled, waved.

It wasn’t fancy.

It was human.

And that’s what made it beautiful.

At night, Buddy and I would find campgrounds. Kids ran barefoot. Marshmallows roasted. We’d trade stories around the fire.

And then — the quiet.

People retreating to tents and trailers, whispering goodnight. A gentle kind of respect. No declarations. Just shared presence. And peace.

Awe helps us pause before we react. It makes us more curious than cruel.

Canada is made of this kind of awe.

Campfires in snow. Ice-fishing huts. Skating rinks. Snowshoeing through pine forests. Summer nights with bonfires and guitar. Snow on the windshield, music on the radio. Coffee shared while the world thaws around us.

We don’t always name it, but it’s sacred.

Poor or rich, young or old — we all deserve these human miracles. They’re the heartbeat of this place.

Einstein once said, “He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

He wasn’t talking about grand cathedrals. He meant this — the ordinary, alive world.

He didn’t belong to any religion, but he believed in the divine mystery: the equations dancing beneath reality. Light as wave and particle. Space bending, time stretching.

What frightened him most wasn’t science.

It was our lack of moral imagination.

That we could split atoms — and then turn that power on one another.

When I was young, I used to picture the universe like a great body — each galaxy a cell, each life a thread. Connected. Alive. Pulsing.

That’s why I’ve always felt protective of this planet. Not out of dogma. Out of awe.

The loon’s cry.

Your breath.

Roots under snow.

It’s all one.

One being.

Fear shrinks us. It makes us easier to divide, easier to sell to, easier to herd.

But awe expands us.

Awe helps us pause before we react.

It makes us more curious than cruel.

And people who stand in wonder —

they’re not so easy to manipulate.

Rumi said, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

Maria Popova reminds us that critical thinking without hope is cynicism, and hope without critical thinking is naïveté.

And Gabor Maté calls awe one of our deepest medicines.

Not naïve.

Necessary.

For healing.

For freedom.

For being whole.

We all want the same things: to laugh, to feel safe enough to be kind, to be astonished by the stars.

And when it comes down to it, we’re all circling the same fire.

A fisherman in Indonesia.

A girl dancing barefoot in Ghana.

A boy chasing a soccer ball in Brazil.

A couple sipping coffee in Australia.

A mother making soup in Lebanon.

A family holding on in Ukraine.

A student in Alberta.

We all want the same things:

to keep our children warm,

to laugh,

to feel safe enough to be kind,

to be astonished by the stars.

So stay small under a vast sky.

Stay curious.

Stay humble enough to be astonished —

and fierce enough to protect that astonishment.

For yourself.

For each other.

For every person on this planet who longs to circle that same fire.

Thank you for being here.

For sharing this moment, this conversation.