(art by Hanna Barczyk)
My word for this year was wonderment. Wonderment is defined as the feeling of of surprise, awe and joy. It is also defined as the occasion or cause for wonder. Wonder is not necessarily what one feels in this world that is filled with so much death and daily tragedies. So often the news is so overwhelming and can spark hopelessness more often than wonder. Yet this is precisely why I started a wonder journal.
It is a way to refocus and record those miracles we encounter in our lives that we often forget when we are drowned in a cacophony of cynicism and chaos. When our systems seem broken, our environment on the verge of collapse, when our culture is continuously driven by a rampant consumerism, where greed and selfishness drive our capitalism to the point of a continuous gap between the wealthy and those of us who struggle to make ends meet.
I think of Hayao Miyazaki, who is in no way an optimist, stating, “Yet even amidst the hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist.”
How many miracles of wonder and beauty do we encounter in our lives that we forget when we are bombarded by the darkness and violence? The rise of a wave. The sweet, juicy taste of an orange. Spotting a Scarlet Tanger. Seeing a flower growing up through the cracks in a sidewalk. The taste of freshly baked bread. Having a conversation with a friend that deepens your connection with them. Reading a great book that makes you see the world more expansively and empathetically. Or reading something that expresses your thoughts and feelings so concisely you feel understood. It’s even more incredible when the author lived hundreds of years ago. Feeling absolutely low and heartbroken when a song that you needed to hear suddenly comes on in the car or at the grocery store.
By keeping a wonder journal, I am forcing myself to slow down and pay closer attention to the world about me, to let it spark questions and to look up answers, and, even when I cannot answer them, to see the world as so much larger and grander than I had imagined. Just this week, I was reading an article about how an astrophysicist, Franco Vazza, and a neurosurgeon, Alberto Feletti, published a study in Frontiers in Physics about how the network of neurons in the brain and the network or galaxies in the cosmos might actually mirror each other. Or that scientists have discovered a slew of new species, including an electric-blue tarantula, a silent frog, light bulb anemones along with new plants and fungi.
Sometimes, for me, it just takes me pausing to be amazed by human creativity. That this world has contained great geniuses in all manner of arts and science and philosophy, but that there are people who are creating, at this very moment, who are unknown now yet will change the world with their discovery or their creation. The creative spirit amazes me, especially in those artists who go unnoticed in their own life time. Van Gogh painted almost 900 paintings in ten years but only sold one. He also believed his biggest artistic failure was The Starry Night. Emily Dickinson wrote 1800 poems with less than a dozen published during her lifetime. She wrote a vast majority of them when she was in isolation from 1858-1865. Dickinson wrote most of her poems on any scrap of paper that was on hand, everything from envelopes, bits of newspaper, the backs of letters, and even a chocolate wrapper. It is obvious that both of these artists needed to create, that it was a force deep within them that had to be expressed in paintings and poetry.
We truly exist in a sea of wonders. Did you know that six ginkgo trees survived the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima in 1945 and that they are still alive now? Or that if you add a single tree to a piece of open pasture land it can increase bird biodiversity up to eighty percent? Did you know there is a rainbow on Venus that is called a glory? Or that giraffes hum to communicate with each other? That the Appalachian Mountains are older than the rings of Saturn? As someone who loves to garden and get my hands dirty in the earth, it’s fascinating that the soil has more living organisms in it than there are people on Earth right now. I am fascinated that trees and plants communicate with each other. Plants even recognize their siblings. The more I read about the natural world, the more my wonder grows. I agree with Rachel Carson that, “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
Jotting down these wonders on a daily basis also gives me a sense of gratitude. It reawakens me to the beauty of this world. I read books that encourage wonder or watch documentaries that allow me to see the grandness of life. I realize that the older I get, the more I want to spend time with only those things that are expansive and enrich my days, that offer hope and a sense of awe and reverence for life. I devote my time to works that make me think and question more deeply. Then I write these things down. I want to reclaim the wonder of the world for myself and to not allow the fear mongers in media to drive how I interact with others and the natural world. I want to embrace those who express their wonder with such exuberant joy, often poets, scientists and nature writers. Those who dive deep into the human experience and re-enchantment me with the magical gift that life truly is.
French novelist Marcel Proust said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” A wonder journal gives me new eyes. Where wonder is awakened, so, too, is imagination. They are deeply connected and intertwined. Both dwell in possibility. The poet William Blake believed that the imagination was rooted in both awakening and recognizing the sacred in all things. Wonder, imagination, and the sacred allow us to be fully alive, full aware.
It shapes how I see my day, what drives and inspires me. I am not concerned with our culture’s concept of success and achievement. Instead, I am nourishing and tending to those things that feed my spirit and imagination. It gives me a clear-eyed vision that is not distracted by our society’s constantly telling us: You’re not enough. You need to buy our product.
A life worth living is not created by the things that we buy but in the moments we actually live. Wonder comes by awareness and being fully present to the life around us. It is allowing myself to see the world afresh through the eyes of my five and six-year old students. To delight in their delights of discovery no matter how many times I have seen a bird, a leaf, an acorn, a rock. To encourage their exuberance and to be around those who encourage mine.
It means disconnecting from social media, from my phone. It is about seeing the world, not simply taking snapshots of it. When I pay attention, I see everything as a seamless prayer, a miracle, a holy gift. It informs how I connect with others, with nature, with myself. Wonder and curiosity are sacred practices for me. My wonder journal is a way of recording the worlds around and within me.
What I record is a reflection of both those worlds, how I perceive them, and how that perception is constantly changing and transforming. It asks of me to see, to listen, to be open to the landscape. It is an invitation to enter into the world more fully. The more I do it, the more moments of beauty shape and inform my days. John O’Donohue writes, “We were sent into the world alive with beauty. As soon as we choose Beauty, unseen forces conspire to guide and encourage us towards unexpected forms of compassion, healing and creativity.”
You see the great generousness of beauty the world has to offer. Awareness leads to awe. It is to enter into the grace infused and intertwined into the very fabric of this universe. I let go of the false images this culture presents to me, the empty narratives of the belief that progress and productivity, functionalism and utilitarianism are what should drive and form us. These have caused us to lose our sense of wonder and of the sacred. My wonder journal is a reclaiming of that blessed inheritance of endless possibility, of that which is far greater than myself. It allows me to dwell in the reality that there are questions for which there are no answers, but that, in itself, fills me me with wonder. Perhaps that is why Socrates said, “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”All I know is that recognizing and recording wonder has opened me to endless appreciation. Isn’t that enough to make it worth it?
(art by Simona Mulazzani)
Thank you for this.