Wonder
Wonderful! Just wondering… “How I wonder what you are.” “She’s such a wonder!”
I love the word “wonder”, first of all because it isn’t spelled the way it sounds, but mostly because it is such a big, unboundaried, elastic word. And where I love it most is when it’s at its most playful. Like wondering who decided the spelling rule for it’s and its.
Wonder is the geography between the fully conscious and the subconscious, a land where reality may think it’s in charge, but caprice and imagination and playfulness are not prohibited. No idea is too silly, no connection too weird, no possibility too far. It’s a sandbox, it’s a kaleidoscope, it’s a magician’s hat, it’s a restorative ten-minutes on the holodeck. Peter Pan lives there, as do Alice and Rudolph. And before we spoil their fun and make them grow up before their time, children also live there.
We should never give up our birthright or relinquish our citizenship in wonder, because it’s also the place where music is born and art arises, kind of like spontaneous combustion. But lest anyone dismiss wonder as a useless state of mind inhabited only by children, vagrants, and artists, consider Archimedes, Einstein, and Edison, all given to letting their minds wander in wonder. Stephen Hawking, losing control of his body and increasingly trapped in his mind, had nothing left to do but wonder, giving us A Brief History of Time and correctly predicting black holes emitting Hawking radiation.
The very best lawyers are those who wonder if a theory of trust law might also work in criminal justice. The very best architects wonder why we don’t put gardens on our roofs, and the very best leaders wonder what’s wrong with abandoning dogmatism in favor of pragmatism.
What would happen if we allowed ourselves to question, to dream, to ask those “what if?” questions.
I wonder.