Awe is defined as:

an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful.

A commentary about why we need more awe in our lives from the New York Times via Ma.tt:

We believe that awe deprivation has had a hand in a broad societal shift that has been widely observed over the past 50 years: People have become more individualistic, more self-focused, more materialistic and less connected to others. To reverse this trend, we suggest that people insist on experiencing more everyday awe, to actively seek out what gives them goose bumps, be it in looking at trees, night skies, patterns of wind on water or the quotidian nobility of others — the teenage punk who gives up his seat on public transportation, the young child who explores the world in a state of wonder, the person who presses on against all odds.

Quotidian is such a cool word. :)

Through various social experiments they found that:

Participants experiencing awe, more so than those participants experiencing emotions like pride or amusement, cooperated more, shared more resources and sacrificed more for others — all of which are behaviours necessary for our collective life.

Their thoughts on how awe works:

One answer is that awe imbues people with a different sense of themselves, one that is smaller, more humble and part of something larger.

Let’s make time for some awe in our lives. :)