curiosity + joy = Wonder
Curiosity is not enough for me. There are thousands and maybe millions of things to be curious about. What really gets me going is when I wonder.
To me wonder is curiosity mixed with joy. Wonder happens when an undeniable emotional connection forms with a curiosity. Curiosity catches my eye, but wonder leads me down the unknown path.
I see wonder in young children’s eyes all the time. You can see it when young ones furrow their brow, get silent, and go to work. Often it’s wonder that drives them to exploration.
Sadly it’s rare to see this level of curiosity in adults. That’s a shame. How can we foster wondrous human beings if we ourselves don’t feel wonder in the world?
Do we, as adults, lose the ability to emotionally connect with a curiosity? I feel that with a little practice we can get back to wonder. Adults need wonder in their lives as much and maybe more than children do. Wonder can provide a connection to the natural world, and help maintain a need to discover physical and emotional aspects of our lives that may need more exploration.
I wonder what you think!
© Jonathan Iris-Wilbanks and Sunflower Creative Arts, 2011
Photo © Jaime Greenberg and Sunflower Creative Arts, 2011
It seems Einstein had a little bit to say about wonder too. 😉
“The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.”
– Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (1949)