My boss hadn’t spoken, and there was no one else in the office. Nor was it my own normal internal monologue spitting out some random thought. Instead, the words seemed to be an actual noise vibrating my ears from the inside out.

In that instant, a memory was triggered of a visit I had made to Hawaii three years prior. I recalled standing on the lip of an 80-foot cliff, bound by verdant jungle on one side and pounding ocean surf on the other, all bathed in the molten light of sunset. The scene was so viscerally beautiful that I became enthralled and, for what may have lasted only ten minutes, entered a state of awe.

This memory arrived and disappeared instantly, and my attention jerked back to my boss who was waiting for me to jump up and gratefully take the job. Obviously, I would accept— any of our public service colleagues handcuffed by their golden pensions would have excitedly tugged on their forelock in gratitude.

And yet, my thoughts lingered on those two disembodied words.

“Fuck fear.”

In that moment—and everything happened in a single moment—I experienced a deep knowing, an absolute certainty that the fleeting feeling of awe I had experienced years earlier had become a flashing beacon. It was a signal that I should leave my suburban home in Ottawa, Canada to go live in a hut on the edge of the cliff between the sea and the jungle.

I inferred the words not so much as a reminder or dare, but more as permission. From his offer to my decision took less than a blink.

I politely declined the job, walked out of his office, went home, and informed my wife of twenty years:

“We’re going to sell everything we own, pull the kids out of school, homeschool them, and in a hut in the jungle on the edge of the sea cliffs of Hawaii….

…You can come if you want.”

In spite of her being a loving and ferociously protective Corsican mother, genetically trip-wired for vendetta, she did not murder me. Instead, she just looked at her unhinged husband, saw in my eyes that I was serious, tilted her head in the way saints do, and gently said: “OK.”

What appeared to be the delusional fiat of a man in full-blown midlife crisis became a semi-controlled burn of an old identity and the start of a brave experiment. The decision became a turning point in my life as it led to a variety of magical moments so inexplicable, so improbable, and so remarkable that I was utterly compelled to change the way I make life choices. 

The objective of this book is to share my experiences, convey how they elicited feelings of awe and wonder, and explain why I now try to find and harness those feelings – not only for their own sake of momentary bliss – but as a sort of compass for making life decisions. I want to show how tuning into these feelings not only helped me make better choices for myself and those around me, but also its corollary – helping me to avoid dangerous choices.

I hope that if I’m able to articulate my stories in the right way, perhaps you will be sufficiently inspired to fuck your own fears, trust in the value of transitioning from head to heart, and tune into whatever it is that uniquely brings you awe and wonder.

Caveat emptor: This isn’t a proverbial Hero’s Journey nor even an adventure travelogue. While I have peppered the book with occasional exotic shenanigans, I only do so to either give context or convey a bit about my character to make a bit more apparent why I did what I did. This isn’t a pot boiling novel either. There are no adrenaline-fueled exposés about war, violence, or political intrigue. No courtroom dramas. Nothing about celebrities, recreational drug use, or amoral wealth. I do not discuss religion or proselytize.

Most importantly, this isn’t a self-help book: there are much wiser folks who can assimilate and explain life’s mysteries better than I. Instead, think of my stories as a collection of field notes—signposts marking my own blind stumbles – for anyone interested in exploring alternative ways of seeing and moving through the world.

Having said that, there are a few cohorts who may find my stories of value. The first are men approaching or transitioning through that existential phase commonly known as a midlife crisis. Their partners too, may gain some insight into why their husbands appear to have gone bananas.

Another group are Gen Zs and Alphas – those who have barely begun their lives. These are the most digitally hyper-connected generations in history, making them relatively bereft of real-world interactions and thus susceptible to mistaking connection for communion. If anyone from that ADD-afflicted generation can manage to focus long enough to read a few of these pages, perhaps they become inspired to seek out real-world experiences they don’t yet realize even exist.

So, what do I mean by the term awe, anyway? This isn’t a trivial question.

While there are many references to awe throughout history in religion, sociology, psychology, and philosophy, scientific research on the subject is inchoate; the first research papers were published only about twenty years ago. The field is so relatively new that even a formal definition of awe based on objective analysis hasn’t quite been nailed down yet.

Nevertheless, one definition that seems to have gained acceptance among psychologists is:

“Awe is a brief emotion that people feel when encountering something vast, and that elicits a need for accommodation which is sometimes accompanied by a sense of fear.”

The key characteristics of awe are a sense of enormity (of space, time, or power) and a need to understand the experience that appears discordant to one’s model of how the world functions.

The term wonder, on the other hand, is the state of open-minded fascination and curiosity that elicits a positively emotive desire to explore or understand a given event or phenomenon.

Based on my own subjective internal experiences, I believe the definition of awe derived from objective external observations may be incomplete. Maybe even flawed. But it will suffice until I reveal my stories, after which I will explain my perspective and make suggestions for further scientific research.

Many memoirs have been written about mystical experiences, the power of love, the impact of nature on the human psyche, or of spiritual crisis in midlife. But I’ve never read one that focuses on the role that awe played in the life of the author quite the way I experienced it. I therefore have neither role model to emulate nor preconceived notion for how best to go about getting my stories out of my head and into yours. As a result, I’ve decided to just write down what I remember as accurately, honestly, and openly as I can without the usual attempts at flowery language or mock self-deprecation that I find to be an irritating affectation of so many autobiographies and memoirs. I’m a technical, non-fiction writer by training, so I’ll stick to what I know.

Another reason why I decided to write this book now relates to my sense of impending global doom. Or at least, impending global darn. I’m old enough to have witnessed first hand the declining trends in global economic, political, environmental, and social systems, and I have a professional understanding of the terrible consequences heading our way. It’s therefore painfully obvious that there is an urgent need for people to collectively think and act differently if humanity is to remain viable and healthy. This is what I hope my stories promote: an alternative way of moving through and managing the world.

Yet another reason for offering my stories now relates to recent technological advancements. It’s easy to understand why there has been such an explosion in scientific advancements over the last few decades in all fields when you consider that nine out of ten scientists who have ever lived are alive today. But Artificial Intelligence seems unique in the history of science and technology due to its ubiquitous nature: it is capable of perpetuating innovation in virtually any field of study, including itself. While this offers enormous potential for good, AI is also a double-edged sword that has already done a massive disservice to the world by dissolving the glue that binds people and societies together: trust.

It is now commonly accepted that we can no longer trust as true or real what we see, hear, or read online—which is where much of modern life is now spent. This has led to social chaos. The internet is now undergoing what seems to be a terminal case of AI distrust disease and is well on the way to deteriorating from a gleaming spaceport of infinite potential to a dodgy gas station toilet.

The science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke predicted the impact of superintelligence fifty years ago. He raised the concern that humans will not know what to do with their time once computers displace them from their daily work. He proposed that when the masses become bereft of meaningful activities, they will need an answer to existential questions like, “What is the purpose of my life?” or “What do I want to live for?” Since I don’t believe machines are a repository for the intangible values humanity needs to survive and thrive, I hope my stories at least showcase something meaningful that is beyond the ken of any widget to feel, appreciate, or offer insight.

This book is an attempt to defend the unquantifiable in a digital world.

Part 1 describes some of my more exotic experiences – from a modern Western point of view – such as witnessing shamanic magic in the cities and jungles of Indonesia, as well as highly unlikely premonitions and dreams that came true. I then segue into the more easily relatable but profound feelings of love and affection.

Part 2 focuses on a period of my life when I had drifted into a less-than-content and seemingly powerless life and details the gloriously stupid and unsuccessful ways that I tried to extricate myself, such as via ultramarathoning, weeks-long meditation sessions, and horror-filled ayahuasca ceremonies. Finally, I describe how encounters with awe and wonder propelled me out of the quagmire that was my life at the time, and why I now seek out those feelings.

Part 3 reviews the characteristics and virtues of awe from a scientific perspective and how they relate to my own experiences and interpretations.

One final word of advice before I begin my stories: anybody can access the feelings – the primordial rapture – of awe and wonder. Certainly, if I can, anyone can. I’m just an ordinary fellow with the extraordinary luck of being alive in a land of opportunity, grateful just to have been born. In fact, the odds that any of us exist at all are so astronomically small, and the mysteries of the universe so mind-bogglingly infinite, that it’s an enigma to me why awe isn’t a baseline state of every living creature.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Cantwell is a strategist and writer whose career has spanned science, policy, and innovation management in Canada and beyond. Trained first as a meteorologist, he began his professional life forecasting weather across Canada’s before moving into increasingly senior roles shaping national approaches to weather warnings, water quantity management, international biodiversity and environmental policy.

Over nearly three decades with the Government of Canada, Cantwell bridged disciplines and institutions. He led the development of the country’s first integrated environmental prediction strategy—bringing together meteorology, hydrology, ecology, and economics—and played a central role in advancing Canada’s international work on biodiversity, including negotiations and leadership roles under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. His work helped establish new partnerships between government, business, and civil society.

Later in his career, following postgraduate studies in strategy and innovation at Oxford University, Cantwell turned his focus to open innovation and crowdsourcing. As Chief Strategist for Integrated Crowdsourcing at Environment and Climate Change Canada, he pioneered efforts to transform how governments solve complex problems by partnering with NASA —opening the door for public servants to collaborate with global networks via private platforms. His work helped lay the foundation for a cultural shift in how large institutions approach innovation.

Since leaving public service, Cantwell has continued to work at the intersection of strategy and human potential as co-founder of a boutique consultancy guiding high-achieving students toward top global universities, helping them craft purposeful academic and personal trajectories.

Alongside his professional life, he is a dedicated free diver and underwater photographer, with a deep interest in the natural world that has informed both his career and his writing. This memoir reflects a life spent navigating systems—natural, institutional, and personal—in search of meaning and connection.