Wonder

A post about reacquainting yourself with wonder and possibility!

It came up on my Facebook feed last night.

A post from a guy who used to be in a band in the 80’s. They’d played with some big names, were *going places*, only for - in his opinion- the manager to mess it up.

“Now my Saturday nights consist of walking my daughter’s chihuahua”

he said.

“What happened?”

Life.

Life happened.

Many of us can tell similar stories.

We had glorious futures in front of us, rolled up like red carpets, ready to unfurl.

But did we?

Or did we only ever have this one, the one we are living right now?

Possibility and wonder are the two ingredients that give youth the charm it holds.

We are excited to have options.

Take the high road, the low road. Potter or fly!

Meanwhile, wonder sits like a candyman presiding over a shop full of gobstoppers and liquorice whips!

What new thing will you try?

Each new experience looks shiny and colourful, enticing.

We are in awe of what we see.

But just like in a sweet shop, you can’t have them all.

You have to make choices.

And sometimes those choices end up making us sick.

And at some point, many of us sack off going in that ‘sweet shop’. We reckon we know all that’s in there, we’re bored of it, we can’t be bothered with the downer that follows the ‘sugar high’.

We fear the sickness so much that we don’t want to even go near the sweets.

Whatever point of your life you are at, I really believe that rediscovering possibility and wonder are the key to making it all it can be.

I get it.

Doors have locked behind you, you can’t go back to the life you once had - or feel you deserved.

The ‘you can be anything you want to be’ school of popular aspirational bullshit has a lot to answer for.

Because…..you can’t.

It’s bollocks.

But that doesn’t mean you are done with, either! Possibilities may not be endless, but they still exist.

We all feel cheated by experiences that weren’t all they were cracked up to be - university, marriage, sex, careers, parenthood…..

But maybe the problem was always the expectation rather than the thing itself.

So much is built around what I call ‘contract thinking’

The idea that you will get a certain result if you ‘follow the rules’.

It stems from childhoods of indoctrination into a ‘reward and punishment’ culture that destroys our connection with the pleasure or point of a process, and focuses only on a perceived outcome.

My mum gave me a classic example the other day.

She was talking about her grandmother.

“Her mum died young, she brought all her brothers up…..only for them to be all killed in the First World War!”

As if looking after them came with a guarantee that they would stay alive. It didn’t. Nothing does. You either do something for the love of it or because you believe it to be the right thing to do……or you don’t bother.

Did your relationship ‘fail’ or did you have many happy times you can still treasure?

Is your job really terrible or is it just shit on paper?

Perhaps you feel silly describing it as wonderful because it doesn’t conform to societal expectations of a ‘good’ job?

Let go of the script.

Reacquaint yourself with the free spirit you once were.

As a toddler you were given no gold star for splashing in a puddle.

You did it for the sheer fun of it.

No one ‘made you’ look for frogs or try and stand on your head.

You played, experimented.

And in doing so, you found joy!

It’s still there.

Yes, you’ve seen a lot of sunsets, but have you seen the one on the end of the jetty that shakes the lake to sapphire jelly with its dazzle?

You’ve had many conversations but maybe there’s one to come that will make your brain sparkle like facets of a diamond being polished!

You’ve met a lot of people but maybe you haven’t yet met the charismatic stranger on a train you fall in love with!

Open yourself up.

A beautiful bee cannot connect with a closed bud.

The guy walking the chihuahua literally doesn’t know what’s round the corner.

Unless he has already convinced himself that nothing is.

If he looks only at the dog on the lead and never at the stars, then it’s over.

Open yourself to possibility and welcome in wonder! Let her saturate your dark corners with her sunshine. Let the light shine on your uncomfortable parts because that is where you need to grow!

Try new food, travel to new places, learn a new language, read a book you would never normally choose, join new classes, talk to strangers…..

Wonder is waiting for you!

The world is wondrous!