Appreciation and Awe

'To see a World in a Grain of Sand. And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.'

 William Blake, Auguries of Innocence 

Appreciation is choosing to notice good things.  We stop and look or listen orto touch or smell or feel the wonder of life: a painting, the mountains, a piece of music; some flowers.  Sometimes we feel speechless because the world is so beautiful, so powerful, so varied – we wonder how it was made.  It is nice to stop and look carefully at the small things that we don’t usually notice, or to look more carefully at something we see everyday.

Appreciation is taking care to notice all the things that are special in our surroundings and in each other.  It means we enjoy the fact that everyone is unique and we like finding out about the things that make us the same and the things that make us different.

We can also refer to appreciation and awe as: wonder, amazement, drinking life in.  The opposite of awe is either not noticing good things, or not being grateful for them, or finding fault with them.