Finding Awe in the Everyday: How Small Moments Make Life Meaningful

A Note on Waiting

We spend so much of our lives waiting... Waiting for the BIG Moments. The wedding, the next vacation, accomplishing a major goal, the first breath, the last breath. Now, don't get me wrong- obviously those are worth celebrating too. But, all too often, we tend to think those are the only places where awe lives—far away, reserved for people who have their shit together in life.

But what if awe is already here? When we slow down enough to notice the steam spiraling from our morning coffee, or the way sunlight filters through the leaves in autumn, or the contagious belly laughs of a toddler—those small moments, too, hold awe. They remind us that life is bigger, messier, and more beautiful than the unrelenting to-do lists that usually consume us in our day-to-day lives.

Awe isn’t rare. It’s not hiding. It’s available to us every single day, in the ordinary rhythms of life- we just need to take a moment to notice.

My Lab Days

During my undergraduate degree, I had the privilege to work as a research assistant with Dr. Michael Steger at Colorado State University. His work focuses on meaning and purpose in life—how we find it, how we hold it, and how it shapes the way we live. I still remember sitting in his lab, running surveys or coding data, while quietly wondering: What is the difference between people who feel that life is meaningful and those who don’t?

That question has never really left me.

I learned that people who feel their lives are meaningful don’t necessarily have all the answers or even have their shit together. What they have is an orientation toward noticing—the ability to see threads of coherence in the chaos. They’re paying attention. They’re gathering up the tiny threads, and weaving them together into something that matters.

Back then—and let’s be honest, even now while I’m still stitching myself together—that truth sank deep: meaning lives in the noticing.

Enter Awe

Years later, I came across Berkley researcher, Dacher Keltner, who studies awe. He describes awe as the feeling that washes over us when we encounter something so vast it shifts the way we see the world.

We’ve all felt it:

• Goosebumps when we hear our favorite song at a concert.

• That silent hush under a starry night sky.

• The lump in your throat when you see the world through your child's eyes.

  
  

  Awe helps us connect to something larger than ourselves. It softens the edges of our egos, pulls us out of self-absorption, and roots us in belonging.

  
  

  And maybe that’s the invitation: not to wait for awe to find us in extraordinary experiences, but to train our eyes and hearts to catch it in the everyday. To live like meaning and awe are not distant treasures we have to chase, but daily companions waiting to be noticed.

  
  

  So here’s my quiet challenge—for me, and for you: What if today, we paid attention just enough to feel awe in something small? The way the crisp morning breeze feels on our face. The nostalgia of a loved one’s voice. The fact that we’re here at all on this planet. The more we look for awe- the more we will see it all around us.

  
  

  Because if Steger taught me anything, it’s that meaning isn’t built in a single moment—it’s woven. And if Keltner taught me anything, it’s that awe is the thread.

  
  

  
  

Together, let’s notice. Let’s stitch. Let’s live like life itself is the everyday sacred- because it is.