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Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
I had gathered with a small group of friends in a Montreal square to watch the heavens do their thing. I had snatched an hour from work, and we shared two pairs of eclipse glasses, passing them around between the five of us.
On my way to meet them, I had walked past the local schoolyard. Classes had been cancelled because of the risk to young eyes, as Montreal was in the path of totality. But the school next door offered child care to those who needed it, so some 30 children were sitting cross-legged on the ground, glasses in hand, dutifully listening to the teacher, more still than I had ever seen them.
I hadn’t gotten too worked up in the days leading up to the eclipse. I wasn’t fretting over the hourly forecast, having long given up the illusion that I control anything, let alone the weather. I had barely put effort into finding glasses. I hadn’t read anything about the eclipse’s path or what we would see, about Baily’s beads or first contact. I had no idea what the squirrels or the birds would make of it all. All I knew was not to look up unprotected. So, I was surprised once it got under way to find myself fizzing with the excitement of a child at the start of a parade.
Since we were taking glasses on and off to pass them around, at one point I saw the sun with my bare eyes. It was the diamond ring as we emerged from totality. Afterward, I wondered if that bead wasn’t the purest distillation of the sun’s rays and therefore the most dangerous to see unprotected. I also wondered whether the beauty just might have been worth it. Even my companions who had seemed initially blasé were won over in the end.
Because when the world went dark, a spontaneous cheer went up, and I could hear the same cheer from Parc Jeanne-Mance a few blocks away, where thousands had gathered on the grass.
The next day, people greeted each other with “Wasn’t that incredible?” rather than “Hello.” To a person, they were beaming.
Awe is a sense of wonder that leaves us feeling small against something beyond our comprehension. It is the shock of immensity. A source of humility and humanity. An eclipse qualifies. But so does a pandemic, which, when it hit our shores, was the last time we felt collective awe, just not of the sort we wanted to feel.
Researchers who have studied the psychological effects of awe believe it can inspire us to care more for others. It can reduce our self-focus and plug us into something larger than ourselves. This is what we saw in the early days of COVID-19: a sense of collective purpose, humility before a threat we could not see, a desire to protect not just ourselves, but each other. But of course, like any heightened experience, the effect fades with time.
Awe has also been touted by psychologists as a balm to heal trauma. In his recent book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, University of California psychology professor Dacher Keltner described it as “a pathway to healing and growing in the face of the losses and traumas that are part of life.”
That day in Montreal, as cheers rose up, voiced in proximity with neighbours and strangers, something that had been forbidden not long ago, I saw the parallel between the awe we felt four years ago, and the one we were feeling now, like opening and closing parentheses, with years of struggle in between. I couldn’t help but think it might be healing for us. To have shared something. Something good. Something that cost no money. Something that cost no lives. Something that happened in the middle of a random Monday afternoon.
We have been through a lot. Maybe this will help us.
Rhonda Mullins lives in Montreal.