2012 Resolution #11 - Live With Wonder
Posted on January 11, 2012 by Maria McInnis, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
#11 in a month long series on resolutions, today's is about living life with a child-like sense of wonder
Resolve to live with wonder.
“When men are terrified, children are only curious. It is difficult to frighten those who are so easily astonished: the young have so little claim on the Unknown that, if they should see it, they would admire it.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
We live in a universe of wondrous things; things that many of us take for granted. Living with wonder means to open your eyes up and truly look at the things that are around us. Dare to have a child-like wonder about things.
When I was a child I used to go camping with my family: We’d go back into a place once called the Electric City in Weymouth, Nova Scotia; a place that is now little more than old Acadian ruins and woods. The lake there and the beach was perfect for setting up camp, and we would go there to escape from the every day world.
One thing I remember the most was the nights on the lake: away from the light pollution, the stars were impossible to count and seemed to stretch on forever from horizon to horizon without end. One particular night I was sitting with my grandmother beside the fire we had built and we were looking up into the sky.
Me, being a curious child, I asked her what the stars were, and she, in her infinite wisdom smiled and told me that the stars were windows into heaven.
The wonder I felt at that moment didn’t diminish even after I learned the truth of what the stars were: balls of gas in space, planets, suns and, at times, entire galaxies. She had been given the chance to disillusion me with facts and figures, but instead she gave me wonder and allowed me the imagination to ponder about the nature of our universe.
When later I began to learn the truth, I only found more to wonder about, and more questions arose. Questions that, sometimes, even the experts cannot answer, and not just questions about the universe: about the world we live in, and the people who lived within it. I was instilled with more than just wonder – I was instilled with the thirst for knowledge and understanding.
“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” – Albert Einstein
According to one Spiritual path out of Celtia, one of the signs of a person deserving of admiration is the ability to look upon the earth with love for the beauty upon it. To be closed off from that was a thing to mourn, for it meant a blindness of the spirit.
Wonder is what starts the gears of the mind to ask questions, and from those questions come answers that can change the very world and the way that we all live upon it. When we have wonder, we allow for, what Richard Bandler, Father of NLP, likes to call an unreasonable curiosity to enter into our lives, and that is when we can begin our personal transformation.
When you live with wonder, the heavens become your window to eternity.
