"Real awe is harder to come by. **Most of us lead ‘awe-deficient’ lives**, according to the neuropsychologist [[Paul Pearsall]], who died in 2007 and who argued that **awe should be considered ‘the eleventh emotion**’, in addition to the ten commonly recognised by researchers. "If we don’t realise we lack awe, perhaps that’s because we understand it so little: even Pearsall struggled to define **its strange mix of fascination and fright**, which can be invoked by a landscape or a newborn baby, but also by a natural disaster or a cancer diagnosis. ‘**The best description I’ve been able to give it so far is that – no matter how good or bad our brain considers whatever is happening to be – it is feeling more completely alive than we thought possible before we were in awe**,’ he writes in his final book, Awe: The Delights and Dangers of Our Eleventh Emotion, which begins with the story of the near-death, in infancy, of his son. He’d never been unhappier than while waiting to learn if his son would survive, he said. But, ‘at the same time, I have never felt such profound awe’." --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[awe]], [[emotions]], [[momento-mori]], [[acceptance]] **Source** -- [[20241114100017 - B - Help!]]