On Wonder
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.
Rachel Carson
Some years ago, I walked into a big-box store in search of some mundane item. I have forgotten what it might have been. I still remember clearly, though, what I encountered there at the front of that store.
She was a small child, a toddler. She caught my attention first because she seemed to be alone there in that cavernous store, no adult in sight. She held my attention because, once I spotted the in-charge adult so I could set my concern aside, I noticed what the little girl was doing.
She was twirling, slowly, gazing up at a light high above her in the ceiling, her tilted face filled with rapture. A rapture so profound that I stood there, gazing, too.
I gazed at the child, though, not at the dazzling light.
I stood for a long moment, filling myself with her delight before I could move on to the now-forgotten task.
If she had been even a few years older, I found myself thinking, we would have known there was something “wrong” with her. Only babies are permitted such delight.
The instant I entertained that thought, a profound sadness swept through me. A sadness that returns each time I remember that small, radiant face.
“Why,” I asked myself then and ask still, “is rapture so forbidden in almost every corner of our adult society? Why must joy be outgrown? Like diapers. What are we afraid of?”
No doubt the question weighs more heavily on my heart than it does for some because my parents and their parents and all the parents we knew of before them hailed from England. And the rules of British culture are clear.
Feelings of any stripe are not quite . . . nice!
Still, the question remains. Why? What has supported such a soul-destroying understanding of ourselves and our world?
It has taken me nine decades to understand and accept the reality that, whatever my parents taught me by word and example, I am a feeling creature. Rational, too, of course. The rational remains important to me. But as Jonathan Haidt points out in his book The Righteous Mind, I am, truthfully, a tiny rational rider on an emotional elephant. And for the most part, what we rational riders choose to do is to justify the direction our elephants have decided to take.
What Haidt doesn’t talk about, though, is the power that rider has, not the power to keep us on a rational path, but the power to suppress delight.
Which is why that small child’s rapturous face stays in my heart. And although the encounter happened so long ago that the twirling little girl must be a woman now, when I think of her, I am still filled with hope.
Hope that the adults who stood back and allowed that rapturous dance went on permitting, even encouraging delight.
Delight in very ordinary lights.
Delight in the miraculous world that births us, sustains us, gathers us at the end.
Delight in her own delight.
If I could choose a single gift to offer myself and everyone I touch—in this holiday season and always—it would be that.
The gift of wonder.
Just that.
