A SENSE OF WONDER: finding those awe moments

As Van Morrison reflected on the 1985 album by Mercury Records, ‘Sense of Wonder’:

Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder
Didn't I come to lift your fiery vision bright
Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder in the flame

And, on the same album in ‘Tore Down a La Rimbaud’ sets out clearly what could now be seen as a mantra for the role of tourism in our lives:

Showed me pictures in the gallery
Showed me novels on the shelf
Put my hands across the table
Gave me knowledge of myself.
Showed me visions, showed me nightmares
Gave me dreams that never end
Showed me light out of the tunnel
When there was darkness all around instead.

We all need more moments of wonderment. That’s what tourism can give us. Those moments that take your breath away. Moments when goosebumps run wild and you begin to understand your place in the world. The sublime.

As Eleanor Morgan so eloquently put it in the Sunday Time Lifestyle magazine of 25.9.2022: “the moment of awe”.

She references the work of the Irish Philosopher, Edmund Burke, who in 1757 revolutionised our understanding of AWE in ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.’ For Burke awe doesn’t need vastness, it is there in the everyday ordinary as well as the extra-ordinary.

We need to seek out and be open to those awe moments because they are good for us…. reducing tension, uplifting the spirit, simply making us feel good. Awe expands our perception of time and induces humility.

Tourism can deliver those awe moments and hasten the sense of wonder.