The Absolute Thrill of Wonder
One of the hallmarks of effective counseling is the taught skill of curiosity. A traditional shortcoming of many coming through the doors of clinic (along with most of humanity in general) is an insistence on black and white thinking. Truth be told, this phenomenon has only been greatly exacerbated by our modern political moment along with algorithms designed to make us land on one side of the fence or the other. As such, when the ingrained way of thinking you have isn’t serving your well-being, it can be deeply detrimental, thereby contributing to sensations of being stuck, down, and often times, depressed.
Insert why curiosity is such an invaluable skill to have.
Children naturally enter into the world with this capacity of curiosity but we immediately seek to guard it. This isn’t coming from a bad place; we understand how beautiful and good it is for children to wonder about everything around them, yet we also understand that in a world full of danger and uncertainty, they need to have a form of protection they can’t foster themselves.
The issue lies in when this very sense of wonder, the deepest implication of curiosity, is replaced by a more sour phenomenon; guardedness.
Don’t read me implying guardedness is a bad thing; for those experiencing or who have experienced trauma, being guarded often keeps you surviving. Keeps you safe when before, especially as a child, you were unsafe.
However, this very sense of guardedness does not serve us the way the we think it does later in life. If anything, while we start by guarding against healthy things to defend against, such as manipulation, extortion, and abuse, this very guardedness works on overdrive and begins defending against love, connection, and health.
Life is a risk; there’s no denying that. Life is a risk; that’s what makes it wondrous.
That guarded part of ourselves doesn’t need to be ashamed for protecting us; it serves a good role of ensuring we don’t get hurt in the same way we did before. In truth, that guarded part of us needs a break. Trauma works in a manner to have us believe that more things are a threat than likely are an actual threat in order to keep us safe. The problem there is it means we never get true rest and what true rest brings; joy, contentment, fulfillment.
And for my money, wonder.
Wonder is an absolute thrill because it serves as a constant stream of hope in our everyday lives. Wonder says “it could work out; who knows.” Skepticism says “it likely won’t work so I’ll just assume it won’t.”
Wonder is the piece of ourselves we let pass by us as we became adults, assuming it had no more utility. Wonder is the precise utility you find abundant in happy, goofy, and thoughtful elderly people; wonder is the precise place of lacking you find in those who’ve become embittered about what their life is and what might have been.
Wonder is about what’s ahead, what could be a blessing while not denying what could also be a burden. Wonder isn’t about blind and foolish optimism; wonder is rather the healthy alternative to similarly blind and foolish pessimism.
I’ll end this with a quote from one of my favorite movies, Lord of the Rings. In lieu of the fellowship minus Frodo and Sam wishing to provide the pair just a few more hours time to destroy the Ring for good, the crew weighs out their options for how to proceed. Healthy caution emerges from Gandalf the wizard, concerned about how their actions might lead to peril. Aragorn, the defacto and now present king, weighs his caution but has a notion of how to proceed. A one in a million gambit to give Frodo and Sam time.
How does Gimli respond?
“Certainty of death, small chance of success…
What are we waiting for?”