When I go for walks with my two younger children, my four year old is careful to warn me: “Make sure you don’t step on any leaf turtles, Mommy!” A leaf turtle is a familiar member of our family, but perhaps not yours. Tumbling on the road alongside our feet, lifted up and twirled in the air beside us, or sometimes inadvertently rolled over by the stroller, these brown shells of once vibrant green leaves hover as convex beings, scuttling ahead of us, breathing with life and hiding something important beneath their curved domes…just as any turtle would.

In a recent article by the wonderful and insightful developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik, she notes how the real key to intelligence may be children rather than ever-expanding large language models. Children construct knowledge of their world based on experience; this immersive and interactive kind of learning is the key to the brilliant creativity of a child’s mind. In addition to abstracting from what they observe and experience, children theorize and re-theorize about the world constantly. This concept of children’s cognitive development is known as ‘theory-theory’ and it states that the mental representations and comparative cognitive restructuring of a child’s mind ultimately mimic the sorts of empirical predictions that adult scientists utilize.

In Gopnik’s article, she shares the story of a UC-Berkeley researcher who was walking across campus with her 4-year old:

The little boy looked up at the famous campanile clock tower and exclaimed with surprise and puzzlement, “There’s a clock way up there!” Then, after a few minutes, he thoughtfully explained, “I guess they put the clock up there so that the children couldn’t reach it and break it.” Everyone with a 4-year-old has similar stories of preschool creativity—charming, unexpected takes on the world and its mysteries that nevertheless have their own logic and sense.

Gopnik, Alison. “Children, Creativity, and the Real Key to Intelligence.” APS Observer, vol. 35, 31 Oct. 2022, http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/children-creativity-intelligence.

In contrast to our current AI large language models,

children are always coming up with ideas that are novel and unexpected and yet plausible. This is much harder for current AI systems. They can do very well if a problem is precisely defined and relatively circumscribed, even if it’s really hard, like finding the right move in chess. But the kind of open-ended creativity that we see in children involves a challenging combination of randomness and rationality. When you interact for a while with a system like GPT-3, you notice that it tends to veer from the banal to the completely nonsensical. Somehow children find the creative sweet spot between the obvious and the crazy. 

Gopnik, “Children, Creativity, and the Real Key to Intelligence”

Being a deep observer of the world and its mix of obvious and crazy opens a window to seeing and responding with that sort of ‘challenging combination of randomness and rationality.’ Like leaf turtles…which are utterly ridiculous and also make complete sense.

When I was growing up…and I mean this ‘growing up’ to implicate the time from when I have my first memories all the way through college…I did not think of myself as female. I was not having a trans-gender experience, though. I did not feel as if I were in the wrong body. I just did not think about my body as gendered so much as I felt a witness to the world and also of the world in a seamless way that didn’t divide things into binary categories into which I was to be sorted.

Unconsciously then, I was naturally attracted to situations, even post-college first jobs, where I would be in a position to simultaneously observe and be of the world in all its randomness and rationality. My first job took me halfway across the world to the edge-land between the rainforest and farmland in eastern Australia. There I worked as an assistant field biologist supporting an ongoing study of sexual selection in satin bowerbirds and its influence on the evolution of male displays and mate searching. For the first half of the season, we conducted intense observations of the bowerbirds. Hiding under canvas tarps propped up by sticks and with square holes cut in the front for windows opening towards their bowers, we would sit for 4 or 5 hours waiting for the bowerbirds to appear. When they did, we noted which birds were there and took copious notes about their behaviors and interactions with other birds. Of course, there were long stretches of time when no bowerbird marched onto our real life screen and, during those times, we only had the whole rest of the world to watch, our attention undirected and unfiltered.

Was I bored? Sometimes. The insides of the tarped observation rooms were covered with handwritten song lyrics and poetry, our minds tapping into memory as much as observation. The particular kind of observations we were doing of the bowerbirds was highly controlled, specific, and was supposed to be verifiable by repeated observations at different times and by different people. In these ways, scientific observation is importantly distinct from noticing.

After explaining to Watson how he deduced through close observation that Holmes was practicing medicine again, had gotten quite wet recently, and had a careless servant, Sherlock Holmes reflects upon his friend’s astonishment at his multiple correct conclusions:

“You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.”

“Frequently.”

“How often?”

“Well, some hundreds of times.”

“Then how many are there?”

“How many? I don’t know.”

“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia (1892)

Rather than a passive watching of the world, the art of observation involves active mental processes. In his book, The Art of Scientific Investigation, William I. B. Beveridge explains that:

It is important to realize that observation is much more than merely seeing something; it also involves a mental process. In all observations there are two elements : (a) the sense-perceptual element (usually visual) and (b) the mental, which, as we have seen, may be partly conscious and partly unconscious. Where the sense-perceptual element is relatively unimportant, it is often difficult to distinguish between an observation and an ordinary intuition. For example, this sort of thing is usually referred to as an observation: “I have noticed that I get hay fever whenever I go near horses.” The hay fever and the horses are perfectly obvious, it is the connection between the two that may require astuteness to notice at first, and this is a mental process not distinguishable from an intuition. Sometimes it is possible to draw a line between the noticing and the intuition, e.g. Aristotle commented that on observing that the bright side of the moon is always toward the sun, it may suddenly occur to the observer that the explanation is that the moon shines by the light of the sun.

William I. B. Beveridge, The Art of Scientific Investigation (2004)

With the glut of sensory information coming at us at all times and from all directions, we develop filters to distinguish what is significant and what is not. These filters are not completely in our control as they are also shaped by culture, social values, and internalized beliefs. With our frequent and pervasive use of smartphones, technology yanks us and our filters into an often deeply distracted living. An experiment run by researchers at Western Washington University confirmed how smartphones can distract so much that people don’t see even highly unusual things unfolding right in front of their eyes.

When I was driving to a friend’s house recently and unfamiliar with the route, I found myself noticing the retail stores, restaurants, auto body shops, and signs along this semi-rural route with more attention. With no particular objective in mind, I saw what I saw, I saw whatever happened to come into view and at one point, pulling away from a red-turned-green light, I noticed a sign which said:

“Are you feeling like next week has been exhausting?”

Now, I will admit that in my semi-focused state, it is possible that I didn’t see the sign correctly. Was I projecting my feelings onto the world? I’m not sure but I did a double take, as much as one can while driving, and repeated the phrase in my head until I pulled up his driveway and was finally able to jot it down. “Are you feeling like next week has been exhausting?” Either I misread it or someone out there just brilliantly captured the experience of our day-to-day existence. I have since become quite enamoured with this question: with its pithy epitomization of how it feels to be in our world where we are always charging ahead and engaged with that rushing moment, the way our minds are actively layering onto our anticipated future busy, and this we place on top of the busy we are already experiencing…to the point of exhaustion. And with the way it poses the situation as a question, as if perhaps there may be someone out there who knows the solution…or at least who wants to help.

The immersion of children who creatively interpret and problem-solve the world does not use the same filters we develop as adults. If you can re-inhabit that space of immersion, what would it feel like? And why might you want to?

When I lived in Santa Barbara, I used to wake up early every Sunday morning, lace up my sneakers, and make the short drive to Stevens Park where the Foothills Trail began and then led into the Jesusita Trail. This trail wound its way up through 1,400 feet of elevation to Inspiration Point where you can enjoy panoramic views of the city and ocean below. I committed to this routine religiously and when I describe those mornings to people now, I talk about the experience as ‘my church.’ Up through the oak and sycamores, carving the familiar twists and turns with my body, catching glimpses of hummingbirds as I neared the top, it wasn’t even the gorgeous views at the summit that induced a feeling of awe in me. It was the immersion all the way up and all the way down where I would break into a run, allowing my body to dictate its pace, knowing the placement of the trails’ rocks and roots, my attention given fully to this place.

Dacher Keltner, a neuroscientist who studies awe calls this feeling the “neurophysiology of wild awe.” And the science of awe turns out to be pretty amazing. This ‘wild awe’ activates the vagus nerve, calming our entire system. The chemical compounds present in nature stimulate our immune system. This power of immersion into places and moments gives us

the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.

Hope Reese, “How a Bit of Awe Can Improve Your Life,” The New York Times, Jan. 3, 2023

I had planned to write an entire blog post on my cousin site on deep immersion into the moment, whether it be a hike in Santa Barbara or leaf turtles on a walk when you are 4 years old. But then I remembered more from the interview Krista Tippett did with Dacher Keltner. Keltner has done loads of research on the neuroscience of awe and from countless interviews, he discovered the number one way that humans experience awe…and it surprised him. It is not from ‘wild awe,’ though that is certainly powerful, but rather through what Keltner calls ‘moral beauty’ which emanates from other people around us:

kindness, courage, overcoming obstacles. You know, saving people’s lives. Just time and time again the most common source of awe is other people. And you wouldn’t think that given what we look at on Twitter and Instagram, but it’s a deep, a deep tendency to choke up and get tears thinking about what people can do.

Dacher Keltner from On Being interview, Feb. 2, 2023

As Keltner observes, the world is “not okay right now.” And the focus on self-care and stress reduction is

remedial, and we need more. And the science of well-being has suddenly surfaced this idea of meaning. That what we really — and you’ve been talking about this for a long time — we have a crisis of meaning. And what are the big things that I need to care about and relate to and orient my life toward?

And awe does that work for you. Awe is about, fundamentally: what is the individual’s relation to the big systems of life that we care about, that move us culturally and individually? For some people, it’s music. For other people, it’s a conception of the divine. For other people, it’s ecosystems. And that’s what awe gives you. And what I’m hopeful about introducing it at this time is — we have been in this big narrowing of consciousness…[and awe tells us] go out and expand your view of things.

Dacher Kelter, On Being

If you watched the video to which I linked above of the research on the distractive nature of smart phones, you will notice that one of the findings was that inattentional blindness causes only 25% of people using cell phones to notice the clown unicyclist and that 51% of those not using their cell phones do see the clown. However, the finding I found even more interesting was that 75% of those walking in pairs saw the unusual sight. They don’t address this finding in the video, but it struck me that being with others may enhance our attentional awareness.

When I went back through the journals from my fieldwork in Australia and other journals I wrote on canoe trips in Canada and rock climbing trips in the Wind River Range in Wyoming, I expected to find deep description of the wilderness. But I found that only in list version:

• many lodgepole pines
• mtn aster, Indian paintbrush (Wyoming st flower), white columbine (CO state flower)
• bear scat, mule deer scat (round pellets), rabbit scat (smaller pellets), grouse scat (longer pellets + lighter color brown)

Wind River Range rock climbing journal 1998

I did come across some descriptions of the thorough absorption I was experiencing in those environments:

Felt more alone and quiet on the river than ever before. For most of the day I was in the lead canoe and with the wind, it was almost impossible to talk to anyone. It was wonderful to have all that time to get into a rhythm and then be able to think and enter a different realm, separate from your body as it works with a mind of its own.

Wakwayowkastic River, Ontario Journal 1998

There was considerable logging of the day’s activities, but most of my journal space is dedicated to other people: either the people I was currently with or those I was thinking about from my past or those I missed through the distance or those about whom I wasn’t sure what I felt but was attempting to process.

After college, I ran away from people. I ran as far away from my family as possible. I ran away from my friends. I ran away from the typical career paths that people I knew started carving. I ran away because I needed to be uprooted in order to figure out what kind of tree I was. And I felt that I needed to do that alone. The thing is I kept running into other people. When we did our observations of the bowerbirds, it felt like a very solitary activity. Yet, we rotated through observation sites and the presence of others was quite present–in the lyrics written on the insides of the tarp, in the names we had collectively given the birds, and in the conversations we would have later about what was unfolding in bowerbird society. One of my favorite memories from the experience is cooking with one of the graduate students and conspiring as we secretly threw peanuts into every dish. Another of my dear memories is of the notes he and I would leave hidden for each other all over the valley, to be discovered and read as we hiked our camera-checking routes. The valley was literally littered with our human connection.

I learn so much from my children. Their thinking, as Gopnik is keen to point out, creatively interprets the world in new and dazzling ways: leaf turtles, my son’s phrase for an upcoming sunset (“get ready for colors!”), or his fascination with the atom. My kids all love music and one day when we were listening in the car, the song “atom 8” by Sleeping At Last came on. Inquisitively peering at my phone in its holder, my 4 year old asked what the picture on the album cover was. I answered that it was an atom and then explained that everything in the world is made up of these tiny things called atoms. I started a list: your body, this car, the road we are driving on, the rain clouds in the distance…and he began to wonder…

A tree is made of atoms? he asked

Yes

That dump truck is made of atoms?

Yes

Your phone is made of atoms?

Yes

…and on and on. The next time we heard the song, he didn’t ask me questions anymore, but told me confidently about all of the things that are made of atoms. As he spoke with the assurance of a knowledge he didn’t fully understand, I began to feel tingly. I watched the world whiz by outside of the car window and was struck by the obvious and crazy fact that all matter shares the same building blocks. Indeed, it is possible to be awed at what we think we already know, just seen anew through another’s eyes.

We live with the societal expectation that each of us can make our own paths, that each of us should manage her own life, that is built on individual home ownership, that divides and atomizes even families as they grow. In our captivation with our self and the lives we can nourish independently, we fall into our separate holes of:

individualism, the idea I’m separate and different from others and have no connections, [and this feeling] has really risen dramatically. And then you add to that the structural factors that have given rise to loneliness and wanting more social contact and not being able to find it. And that is, as Vivek has said, a crisis of our times, a health crisis.

And awe, and where we find it, and how it changes our minds, where when we feel awe in the moment, we suddenly feel like we’re part of an integrated community. We do things that are good for the community. We build things like public art spaces or gardens or game nights that bring us together. It is a compass, to use your language, of meaning like, “Oh, I gotta get back together with other people.” So, I think awe is really a direct pathway to addressing these social crises of our time.

Dacher Keltner, On Being

The atom may feel like an individual thing, but seen another way, seen in the collaborations it makes, it builds and connects everything in our world. Even us. If my very self is made of the same basics as your very self, how separate are we? Yes, we live with walls between us. We lived teetered always between a freeze and a thaw as in “Mending Walls” by Robert Frost where we discover the gaps in the wall have been made unbeknownst to us as:

No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
                       - Robert Frost, Mending Wall

With unintended doubt cast upon the necessity of these walls, we have the chance to repair it…or let it continue to fall away. Maybe we build too many walls around what already is the incommunicable between us:

"It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

The other day at the breakfast table I read “Can I Play Too” from Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie series. As Gerald and Piggie try to figure out how to include a snake in their game of catch, my three kids were rapt and then burst out laughing at the jokes, the littlest on my lap trying to navigate this shared moment with us, giggling at parts the rest of us didn’t even recognize as funny. Beyond this moment, nothing else existed and our shared laughter chimed against the high ceiling and bounced back to us off of the stone floor. We were encircled in our own joy. This, as Tippett may say is the stuff of ““Collective Effervescence.” [The] wonderful language for… describing [what is] so ordinary and built into all kind of life.” The leaf turtle and the holy atom and you.