Last week, on the drive home from hospital, I found myself irritated by the sound of music. Lyrics and melodies that previously lifted my soul were now boring, even burdensome, and after cycling through my favourite tracks, I opted to drive in silence, monotonously steering the wheel. In the lift up to my apartment was a dog, and as I stared, it seemed like the most uninteresting dog in the world.

When I got home, my housemate remarked that today was a nice day.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s a nice day today,” he repeated.

I looked out at the window and saw, to my surprise, that he was right. There was a gentle golden hue in the sky, remnants of the sun that had just set. Three silver clouds floated in the air, and in the distance two birds flew side by side, flapping their wings in sync, as if dancing. The sight sparked in me a lost sense of wonder, and I realised that for the day, and perhaps even the week, I had a deficiency in awe. Awe deficient disorder, I thought. ADD.

There is already an ADD out there: attention deficit disorder, now better known as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). This is a neurological condition typically characterised by inattention and/or hyperactivity. People with ADHD often appear distracted, forgetful, fidgety, and report having racing, uncontrollable thoughts. It is quite common, too, with 6-7% of Australians affected. But beside a few psychology and spirituality blog posts, this new ADD – awe deficient disorder – doesn’t exist.

But while staring out the window, I wondered if the ADD I was experiencing was something that needed a term for itself. Upon reflection, my previous experiences with burnout had similar warning signs as today, and had all led down dark paths. And with 70.9% of Australian healthcare workers experiencing moderate to severe burnout*, I could not be alone in this experience.

In psychiatry, this ADD has another term: anhedonia, the loss in one’s ability to experience happiness. Anhedonia is one of two symptoms that one must have to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder, the other being depressed mood.

But where anhedonia (loss of happiness) differs from loss of awe, is that happiness fails to encompass the experiences in life that are stunning beyond words. For instance, happy songs are rarely great songs. Happy songs are things like elevator music. Truly great songs span the whole of the human experience and are rarely happy. There is a depth of awe, and even horror in them, that makes us shiver. If we lose our ability to wonder, we lose these grand moments as well, and I think that is something worth being concerned about.

I would love to see a future that diagnoses awe deficient disorder as quickly as pneumonia or a heart attack. Because though one might appear fine on the outside, there is a yearning for wonder from deep within that must be met.

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*This survey was done during COVID-19, but similar follow up studies report similar figures.