Awe as the Antidote: How Small Moments Restore Big Meaning

My husband and I saw Santa yesterday. We didn’t mean to, but we were out getting Christmas decorations (trip 2 of 2 for the tree) and capping off about three full weeks of decorating the house for the holidays. Historically, I’ve been a “No Christmas decorations until the day after Thanksgiving” person. My lovely husband, however, is a fiend for Christmas. He loves the carols. He loves the movies. He loves the garlands. He loves the Coca-Cola red of Santa’s suit. That. Man. Loves. Christmas.

And let’s be honest, he’s had a rotten year with the cancer and all. (For the uninitiated: he’s now perfectly fine and just needs follow-up scans every few months for a while.) So I bent on the “No Christmas decorations until the day after Thanksgiving” thing. Honestly, it was going to be more work to hold it off than it was to just give in to it.

We were heading into The Christmas Place, and a little greenhouse-looking structure off the front walk caught my attention because I knew it wasn’t there the previous week. Before I consciously registered it, I found myself happy and laughing. When my brain finally caught up, I realized it was Santa’s dwelling, and Santa himself was sneaking to the corner window, smiling at us and waving.

“Aw, there’s Santa!” I exclaimed, already waving back. My husband followed my gaze, laughed, and waved too. But here’s the part that surprised me: it wasn’t “childhood magic” that lit me up. It was something far more grown-up and tender: being caught off guard by something completely delightful. It made me feel small, but in the best way. Not small as in fragile or insignificant. Small as in cared for. Connected. Momentarily part of something larger than my running to-do list and the constant hum of adult responsibility.

And that, my friends, is awe.

Awe is a complex emotional-cognitive state elicited when we encounter something vast, physically, conceptually, or experientially, that pushes our minds to stretch a little wider than usual. We feel a perceptual “smallness” in relation to the moment, accompanied by a softening in the body, a widening of attention, and a temporary suspension of our usual mental chatter. Seeing someone waving at you when you’re not expecting it is enough to jolt you out of your patterns. Seeing that the person waving is a figure who somehow spans time, culture, memory, and belief? That’s enough to remind you that you’re held in something much bigger than your inbox.

Inside the store, the opportunities for awe abound (The Christmas Place does not mess around). Several shoppers had toddlers in their carts, and judging by the weary posture of their parents, I suspect this was a “wear them out so they’ll sleep tonight” operation. But everywhere those kids turned, colors, sparkles, textures, sounds, each new sensation pulled their little mouths into an “O” of wonder.

Watching them, I felt my own awareness widen. Awe is contagious that way. Their wonder reminded me that just because “I’d seen it all before” didn’t mean I couldn’t see it anew. For a moment, I saw it the way they did, felt small again, and, importantly, loved again.

We’ve all heard that awe helps us find meaning. And it does. Beautifully. Awe interrupts the grind just long enough for us to remember that we’re not cogs in a machine, we’re human beings moving through an unbelievably intricate, strange, gorgeous world.

But somewhere along the way, we pick up the belief that awe lives elsewhere. That it requires a pilgrimage. That we need to book the once-in-a-lifetime vacation: the northern lights, the Great Barrier Reef, St. Peter’s Basilica, the place we swear we’ll see “before we die.” And yes, those places are extraordinary. But waiting for awe to appear only on the grand stage means we miss the micro-moments that can restore meaning in the middle of our very normal Wednesdays.

The holidays make awe feel easier. Lights twinkling on houses. That first chord of a carol you didn’t realize you missed. The deep inhale of a fresh pine tree. Strangers suddenly offering more smiles than usual. Even Santa waving from a glassed-in tiny house in Middle Tennessee.

But awe, real awe, isn’t seasonal. It’s available year-round if we’re willing to practice noticing.

A caring nudge as you move into your week

Here’s what I want for you, especially if you’re feeling wrung out, brittle, or disconnected from the meaning of your work:

Don’t wait for a vacation to hand you awe.

Let awe catch you by surprise in the middle of your routine.

Look for the small things that make you feel gently, beautifully small: your kid’s breath when they’re sleeping, a patient saying something unexpectedly wise, the way winter light hits the floor, the hush of early morning before the world wakes up.

Meaning doesn’t just come from big achievements or big moments. Meaning accumulates through these little interruptions of wonder that remind you you’re still alive, still connected, still capable of feeling moved.

Your micro-challenge this week:

Find one moment each day that makes you pause for half a second and feel that soft tug of “something bigger.”

It doesn’t have to be dramatic. It just has to be genuine.

Let awe do its quiet work. Let it widen your world by a few millimeters at a time. Let it stitch meaning back into the places you thought you’d lost it.

And if Santa shows up, please make sure you wave.