51 Photos That Show Just How Strange Everyday Life Can Be

Witnessing things that move us — even if it’s ‘just’ a wild animal crossing our backyard or a star-studded sky — can have quite the effect on us.

“Awe is my reminder that beneath the ordinary lies the infinite,” says neuroscientist Hari Srinivasan, who is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Vanderbilt University.

These moments might feel fleeting, but a 2023 Harvard study found that just 15 minutes in nature can improve mental health, underscoring how quickly awe can soothe stress and alter our physiology.

Scientists are now tracing how this elusive emotion moves through the nervous system and why it’s so powerful.

Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, has been studying how awe reshapes the mind for decades.

He frames awe as more than stress relief. According to the the pscyhologist, it nudges us into what some call “tend-and-befriend,” a mode where attention turns outward toward kindness, belonging, and purpose.

Some findings show that awe may lower cortisol and reduce inflammation.

A 2015 study of 94 undergraduates discovered that students who reported more frequent awe showed significantly lower circulating levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a biomarker of inflammation.

Awe was the biggest predictor among positive emotions, even after controlling for health and personality factors.

Brain scans detect similar signs in the mind. In 2019, researchers at the University of Amsterdam asked 32 healthy adults to watch awe-inspiring, positive, and neutral videos while inside an fMRI machine.

During the awe clips, activity in the brain’s default mode network (the system connected to focused thinking) dropped noticeably compared with neutral clips.

This decrease helps explain why awe can feel transcendent: it shifts attention away from our usual inward thoughts and toward a wider view of the world around us.

Awe even bends our perception of time. In a 2012 Psychological Science study, participants who experienced awe felt time expand, which left them less impatient, more generous, and more satisfied with life.

So hopefully, the people who took the pictures on this list embraced the moment before photographing it. And if you ever find yourself in a similar position, take a second to pause and appreciate it before reaching for your camera.

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