I wasn’t planning on being present.
I just ended up somewhere that made it unavoidable.
Capture the Moment
There are moments that take my breath away. For that instant I am completely awed by beauty and everything else falls away.
For me, these moments often occur in nature — a sudden dazzle that evokes a burning desire to capture the scene for eternity. Not with a camera — but with my own eyes, so I don’t miss a single second.
But there are other times in my life when those same moments appear — instead of pausing, I move on so quickly that I barely register their passing. Even when I remember to take a picture or a video, I find myself asking: Why am I looking at this through a screen when it’s right in front of me? What’s so urgent in my life that I’m willing to let this moment of awe so easily slip away?
What Awe Actually Is
Definition of AWE:
Awe is defined as an emotion that “variously combine[s] dread, veneration, and wonder” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) or “a feeling of reverential respect, mixed with wonder or fear” (Oxford English Dictionary).
It’s inspired most often by “overwhelming greatness (as in beauty, power, or size)” (M-WD) or “the power or beauty of the natural world” (OED).
These definitions of awe surprised me: How could an emotion inspired by something beautiful — like nature — evoke what we typically call negative emotions — fear and dread?
Awe is rarely categorized as a negative experience, and yet, that’s what the definitions portray.
But when you think about it, the contradiction makes sense. Because thinking about something greater and more powerful, and letting that realization take over, is a gentle reminder of our insignificance. As humans, it’s important to feel like we are worthy, that we matter. No wonder being in nature, being present in its beauty, can bring up mixed feelings.
Beauty is often a pleasant experience — but it can stir up a kind of loneliness: when something is precious, you feel the fear of losing it, and that fear pulls you out of the moment. Perhaps that’s why many people find being present difficult.
This idea made me reflect on moments of awe in my life, when I feel torn between two reactions: being fully present, and resisting the very thing I want to take in. But why would I resist beauty? Where is the resistance coming from?
The resistance comes from two places — from inside, because awe reminds us of our insignificance, and from outside, because society has taught us that value and worth come from output, not from the experience itself.
Why Beauty Gets Dismissed
Our internal narratives are often shaped by the outside world. To understand the push-and-pull, it’s helpful to zoom out and look at how society has shaped us.
Some forms of presence are celebrated — flow states, peak performance, being in the zone — while others are dismissed — stillness, rest, sensory awareness — often without noticing the contradiction.
If you’re in the flow of work, people call it being productive. But stillness is often looked down upon — if you’re enjoying yourself, if you’re relaxed, somehow that means you’re lazy or unmotivated.
In reality, stillness and flow hold the same qualities: openness, a release of control, presence. Losing yourself in that presence matters, just like when you’re in the flow of something. These are the conditions for inspiration and creativity.
All forms of presence share a similar experience of being fully absorbed in something, but there are important differences in mechanism and function.
Running, for example, is sometimes a way to cope emotionally, a time to think, a momentary escape. It’s considered exercise — good for your health, a tool for shaping how you look.
That’s all valid and important. But doing and being aren’t the same thing: running can become a shield that blocks out the noise — whereas what we’re talking about here is releasing the guardrails so you are connected with whatever is present, and quieting the mind reduces noise, allowing a clearer signal to emerge.
Some people get into trouble when they try to meditate and use it to relax in order to be more productive, instead of allowing the process itself to be the aim, with any resulting benefits as mere byproducts.
The point isn’t to make presence useful. The usefulness of awe may be real, but the moment you try to force awe into usefulness, you lose the thing that makes it powerful.
Why High-Performers Struggle with Awe
For most people — particularly leaders and high-performers — who are used to operating on a narrative of external validation and productivity as self-worth, there’s a logic that makes this distinction more relatable.
High performers have spent their careers being rewarded for control, output, and measurable return. The things that produce their best work — creativity, genuine insight, fluidity — require the exact quality they’ve been trained to suppress.
Innovation requires creativity, and creativity requires letting go. Creating something genuinely new requires fluidity and freedom — if you’re trying to control every outcome, you’re working against the very thing you’re trying to produce.
We accept that being in the flow of work is considered productive. Stillness operates on the same principle: you’re practicing the ability to let go, because that’s what flow actually requires. Why do ideas come in the shower? On a walk? At the moment you stop trying?
For people who find it hard to access presence directly, this is an entry point to restructure ingrained beliefs, and adjust your approach. And sometimes, as the benefit becomes real, the belief shifts on its own.
But this argument is the starting point, not the destination.
Using relaxation purely as a productivity tool can work against the very thing it’s supposed to produce because that often creates a level of pressure and stress that people don’t find helpful.
Using something as a means to an end is not the same as doing it because you enjoy it. If you’re with a person or a job, you could enjoy it for what it is — but if you’re using a person to fill a need or a hole, the meaning shifts. You’re still getting something out of the person, but it’s not the same relationship.
Similarly, you can engage with nature for what it is — or you can use it as a tool for something else. The relationship changes depending on your intention. Here, productivity — a measure of achievement — is not the primary purpose. Aiming for an outcome shifts the focus from the present to the future. Presence is about the here and now. Presence holds meaning — and living in that meaning is the point, not the future it might produce.
People may dismiss presence because it is not productive in an explicit way. But productivity is often the easier thing to justify, because it comes with external validation.
The goal isn’t to arrive at pure presence immediately — it’s simply to get people willing to practice it at all, starting from wherever they actually are.
Being in awe takes more courage: you are present with a mixture of seemingly opposite sensations, instead of escaping the way you might when managing each sensation in isolation.
For leaders specifically, the ability to be moved by something — to notice beauty, to feel wonder — isn’t incidental. It’s one of the earliest indicators of whether perspective is intact.
When Even Beauty Cannot Reach You
What happens to decision-making, creativity, and perspective when someone loses access to awe?
The times I can’t focus — when even the beauty of nature cannot draw me in — that’s also a signal. What has become so consuming that even the beauty directly in front of you no longer touches you or deeply moves you?
Almost no one genuinely finds a sunset ugly or the ocean offensive. There’s a near-universal quality to certain things in nature. Which means when even that baseline stops reaching you, it’s not a preference — it’s one of the earliest signals available. Not the signal that arrives when something goes wrong loudly. The quiet one that arrives before anything loud does.
It’s the difference between learning from when things fall apart and noticing the quieter signals along the way — like losing excitement about something at work before you can name why. You don’t have to wait until you’re burned out before pausing to find out why. If you pay attention, how you relate to presence drops hints along the way.
Sometimes when I get out of the habit of stepping away from the noise, there’s almost always more space when I do. You might need that jolt, especially if you’re in the middle of the bustle. Though that’s not an argument for waiting until you need one.
Find What Presence Means for You
In many ways, beauty is universal — which gives it simplicity. But that universality is also where the complexity lives.
It doesn’t have to be nature. It doesn’t have to be sitting still. Any sort of activity can work — the point is how you relate to it, and the underlying meaning that you choose to assign.
Nature doesn’t require you to make it, perform it, or sustain it. It just is. That’s what makes it different from other ways of quieting the mind.
There’s beauty in nature — making it simple and complex at the same time. Its processes and consistency give it simplicity: the flow of water at various temperatures and pressures; the cycles of the sun, moon, and stars; how the wind flows; then rain turns to snow. You can explain the science behind it, but there’s also a magical quality to the design and synchrony.
And sometimes, words can’t fully hold it. The beauty is real even when language falls short. That’s okay too.
Regardless of what form it takes for you, the logic is the same. The question isn’t whether you need this — it’s whether you’ve been listening when it tries to reach you.
Discover more from TheXponential | Biyang Wang
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