Since writing my post Happiness, awe and finding what makes you strong, I've been asking my daughter to describe her daily moment of awe, as we sit down for our end-of-day chat. I'm guided by the definition of awe that Dr. Julia Baird provided during her recent interview on the Australian podcast The Imperfects: awe is something that stops you in your tracks—something that you marvel at.

My moment of awe came on this morning's walk with my husband and daughter around Walter Baker Park in Kanata. As we came around a corner, we emerged at a small pond on which two dozen geese were floating peacefully. We stood and watched them for a few moments.

Later in the day, I started reading Baird's book Phosphorescence: A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark. In it, Baird wonders whether, instead of trying to figure out how to stay happy, we should consider how we "survive, stay alive, or even bloom when the world goes dark, when we are, for instance, overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain?" In her own search for inspiration, she notes: "I learned to deliberately seek out awe and to find it in nature, in others, in friendship, in silence." She says she learned these powerful lessons: "To find in nature a kind of daily rebirth. To pay attention. To not underestimate the soothing power of the ordinary."

One way to not underestimate the power of the ordinary or to recognize a moment of awe is to answer the simple question: "What was your moment of awe today?"