Go Look at Something Big: Awe as a Longevity Practice

Every other article on this site can be reduced to a number. Grams of protein. Minutes in Zone 2. Hours of sleep. This one can’t, and that’s the point.

There’s a growing body of research on awe — the specific feeling of encountering something so vast it rearranges your sense of scale. A ridgeline at first light. A night sky with no town for fifty miles. The psychologist Dacher Keltner has spent years showing that awe isn’t just pleasant; it measurably lowers inflammatory markers — in a 2015 study, awe was the single strongest predictor of lower interleukin-6 among all the positive emotions tested — quiets the self-focused chatter that drives anxiety, and leaves people more generous and patient afterward. It behaves, in other words, like a drug we haven’t learned to sell yet.

Why this belongs in a healthspan guide

The longevity literature keeps circling back to two findings that resist quantification. People with a strong sense of purpose live longer — a 2019 JAMA study of adults over 50 found those with the strongest sense of purpose had significantly lower mortality over the following years. People with rich relationships live longer — a meta-analysis of 148 studies found a 50% greater survival likelihood for people with stronger social connections. Both effects rival the size of the classic risk factors, and neither fits neatly on a supplement label.

Awe feeds both. It’s hard to feel like the center of your own small worries while looking at a glacier. And the places that produce it tend to be places we go with someone, and talk about for years after.

You can optimize a body into its nineties. Whether those years are worth having is a different question, and it isn’t answered in a lab.

The unfair advantage

Here’s the quiet thing most longevity content misses. It’s written as if the goal were to survive — to subtract risk until nothing is left to kill you. But nobody climbs a mountain to subtract risk. They climb because being up there, tired and small and a little scared, is one of the ways a life feels like it’s actually being lived.

That’s the version of longevity worth chasing: not just more years, but more years spent doing the thing at the top of the climb.

How to actually get some

You don’t need a Himalayan expedition. Awe scales down.

Get to real dark once a season. An hour from most cities is a sky you’ve forgotten exists.
Walk uphill until the view changes. The payoff of a summit is disproportionate to its difficulty.
Go slow enough to notice. Awe needs attention. A trail run and a trail walk are different medicines.
Bring someone. The memory compounds when it’s shared.

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If you want the science behind all of this laid out properly, Keltner’s Awe is the definitive tour — and a good argument for why the next thing you should schedule isn’t a blood panel, but a horizon.

The rest of this site will help you build a body that lasts. This pillar is about making sure it goes somewhere.

Sources

Stellar JE, John-Henderson N, Anderson CL, Gordon AM, McNeil GD, Keltner D. “Positive affect and markers of inflammation: discrete positive emotions predict lower levels of inflammatory cytokines.” Emotion. 2015;15(2):129-133. PubMed
Piff PK, Dietze P, Feinberg M, Stancato DM, Keltner D. “Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior.” J Pers Soc Psychol. 2015;108(6):883-899. PubMed
Rudd M, Vohs KD, Aaker J. “Awe expands people’s perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being.” Psychol Sci. 2012;23(10):1130-1136. PubMed
Alimujiang A, Wiensch A, Boss J, et al. “Association between life purpose and mortality among US adults older than 50 years.” JAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(5):e194270. JAMA
Keltner D. Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. Penguin Press, 2023.