THE GIFT OF WONDERMENT

Wonder delights the senses.

To wonder is to delight in the simple and complex mysteries in nature; we love the sights, sounds, their tastes, touch, and scents. They touch our thoughts, the unknowns with their complexities and much more than one can take in.

Children have a gift of wonder. They delight in watching an insect alight on a leaf, a pill bug roll in their palm, a lizard doing push-ups, a snail on the sidewalk, and a snake slithering in the dirt.

Children ask many questions that originate from their innate ability to wonder. How do things work? Why do they do that? How are they made? What do they eat? Why are they that way?

I like to wonder as I wander especially out in nature. I see much that fascinates me. I open my eyes to see the unusual in the usual. Mysteries abound. Everywhere you look you find them.

My brother and I share this love of wonder. I remember being in second grade and he in first grade, how after school we wandered the alfalfa field while looking at the sheep and talking.

A few years later he and I scrambled to a distant corner of the farm acreage to look at a bed of wildflowers full of California poppies and violet lupine. Luscious, they were. He and I, content.

I have an outlet for my sense of wonder. I view as I write. My words describe the beauties as they touch me. I act like a conduit sharing the mystery of wonder with my quite willing pen.

Artists understand wonderment.


*photo by Katie Rodriguez on Unsplash