If You Go Outside You'll Find that Today is a Day of Awe and Wonder

With each passing generation, we are spending less and less time outdoors. There was a time, not very long ago, that we all understood that we needed, every day, for many hours a day, to step out from under our ceilings, to be free of our walls, to escape from the straight lines imposed upon the world by humans, and bathe in the undulations and curves of the natural world.

At the same time, the world is demanding that we engage in more and more abstract thought. The gathering and hunting lifestyle for which we've evolved called for what those who study these things call "passive attention." As we move through nature (without our devices, of course), our attention is more easily brought into the present, where our thoughts tend to drift easily from object to object and from topic to topic in an effortless way. This makes perfect sense because our ancestors needed to remain aware of their surroundings: to become lost in thought while, say, in a jungle or savannah greatly increased the odds of becoming a predator's meal. Engaging in, say, mental mathematics meant missing out on those berries or nuts. In other words, Homo sapiens that were unable to allow their thoughts to attend to the sounds, scents, and sights of the world around them, to enter a state of what psychologists call "soft fascination", did not tend to survive long enough to procreate. In other words, except in certain, relatively rare circumstances, too much abstract through could be deadly.

This is why we tend to grow restless and increasingly distracted when we've spent too much time indoors. Multiple studies have shown the mental benefits of getting outdoors. Doctors in South Korea, the UK, and other places are prescribing "forest bathing" to their patients. A twenty-minute walk in a park has been shown to improve children's concentration and impulse control (both of which are required for engaging in abstract thought) as much as a dose of Ritalin.

Anyone who has spent time with young children have seen the effects of moving from indoors to outdoors. It's like pushing a mental reset button. And by now, everyone in our field, even those who continue to, misguidedly, impose academics on young children, should be well-aware of the mountains of data telling us to get children outdoors, preferably in natural spaces.

In my conversation with author and parent educator Maggie Dent on Teacher Tom's Podcast we discuss the current mental health crisis that is impacting even in our youngest citizens. She asserts that a big part, perhaps the most important part, of any cure must be getting our children playing in the natural world. In nature their play becomes more imaginative. It's while playing in nature that they most naturally practice being resilient, where they develop their fine and gross motor abilities, and where they most easily enter into that state of soft fascination which is what science journalist Annie Murphy Paul refers to as the brain's "default mode network."

But what stuck me most in my conversation with Maggie was her assertion that "nature offers awe and wonder."

Psychologist and author Dacher Keltner has studied awe and wonder. His bestseller is called AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and how it Can Transform Your Life. He tells us that the experience of awe is like pushing a reset button for the brain. It makes us more curious and more likely to rethink what we thought we already knew. When we find ourselves in the presence of something bigger than ourselves we become less self-centered and more inclined to feel connected to other people and the world, which is, at the end of the day, what stands at the core of mental health: connection.

And while I'm sure that it's possible, under just the right conditions, to experience awe while indoors, the most reliable source of awe is nature. Maggie tells the story of ducking under a tree with her grandson to escape a sudden rain storm and how he spent 45 minutes immersed in a self-directed, free-form study of "fronds." The word awe tends to evoke mighty mountains, vast oceans, and the night time sky, but it is also found in fronds and twigs and pebbles. It's located in birds and bees. It's there, just awaiting our passive fascination to be struck by it in the wind, the rain, and the clouds. Indeed, what is more awe-inspiring than an hour lying in the grass, eyes closed, just listening?

Today, June 20, 2024 is the summer solstice, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, the longest day of the year. It is an event that has awed us since at least the Neolithic era, but probably even predates that. Humans have expressed our awe in celebrations and monuments. Just because science has explained it, doesn't mean it isn't any less awe-inspiring today, although most modern humans will spend this day, this day of days, indoors, completely unaware of this magnificent, brain-enhancing thing. No wonder so many of us, including our children, feel so disconnected.

The solstice officially occurs at 1:50 p.m. PST. I plan to be outdoors at that very moment. Perhaps you'll join me.

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Another thing Maggie and I discuss is the vital importance of risky play to the development of young minds and bodies. Nature is not only the source of awe, but also offers many of the "just right" risk taking opportunities they need to develop into curious, resilient, and courageous humans. Sadly, as Maggie points out, we live in a world of fear around allowing children even a modicum of risk in their play. If you are interested in providing the children in your life a summer of outdoor play (and beyond), please consider joining the 2024 cohort for my 6-week course Teacher Tom's Risky Play. In it this course, we will explore how we can, even in today's fearful world, offer children the kind of playfully risky childhood's they need and deserve. To learn more and to get on the waitlist, click here.

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