Awe of Wonder

Feb 5

Oh, wonderful, wondrous wonder. Let’s wonder more about you…

I’ve been seriously wondering about wonder for over two decades, through writing, reading, teaching, and dreaming. Most of what I’ve come to think and practice about wonder comes from the wisdom of children.

Wondering about anything—being still for a moment inside a space of wonder—is simply a marvelous thing. It can be beautiful, ugly, full of joy or sorrow, sometimes easy, sometimes hard, spiritual, practical, small, revelatory.

It’s the awe of wonder that calls to me, invites me to listen more deeply, open my heart, feel into its unknowing. It’s the awe of wonder compelling me to write this here, now.

Awe is the essence of wonder, although we may not always be aware of this or tap into its wholeness when we are wondering about something. The word wonder is used so frequently and applied with such variation, it sometimes seems as if wonder has been diluted from the fullness of what it is (and wants to be).

The beautiful thing about wonder is that it’s always here—unlimited energy inviting us to connect with it in any small moment of our lives. Wonder makes it easy for us to connect with it, too. All we need to do is pause, notice, and allow ourselves to savor the not-knowing of something. How do we do this?

We don’t rush into our minds to formulate questions. Or make lists of where we might find answers. And we definitely don’t take out our phones to ask a machine learning algorithm system.

We do allow ourselves to be inside the expanse of wonder, to let ourselves not-know something… anything…everything. When we are present in a moment of awe, we feel into it, drift, maybe fall, beyond what-could-this-be, through why-am-I-wondering-about-this…deeper and deeper into a connection that feels quite beyond ourselves, beyond what our minds are able to know.

This may seem abstract at first, but once you practice, it becomes a habit, and after much more practice, becomes a way of being—a life connected with unlimitedness of everything through a steady practice of not-knowing the ordinariness all around us.

We all have this expansive space—this awe of wonder—inside us. We simply need to trust that it’s there and feel into it. Wonder loves to know we trust it to take us places beyond where we could take ourselves.

Keep an eye out for these diluted ways “wonder” often shows up:

Wonder as a means to an end

Schools or programs/materials might invite wonder as a beginning stage in children’s learning of something (think of those old KWL charts: What do I know? What do I want to learn? What did I learn?). Wondering becomes a vehicle to elicit questions to be investigated and answered. This can be useful. We all engage with this kind of wonder when we want to learn more about a topic. There isn’t a problem with this, per se. It’s simply important for us to also make space for a more expansive wonder…. a wondering that doesn’t need to be going anywhere or learning anything that can be “known.”

Romanticized wonder

This is highly visible in our media and culture. Wonder that is child-like, dreamy, full of frivolous curiosities, maybe flighty with lots and lots of questions tossed around as if wonder is like running through a field feeling the tickles of every small piece of nature. Sure, there is often a morsel of truth inside cliché, but wonder is much more than any romance of it. Wonder has a whimsy to it, but it is a serious whimsy. Just as curiosity is about commitment and rigor as essential for its play, wonder is about an expansive wholeness of who you are inside your wondering.

Wonder for “engagement”

This is so common it can be hard to see. Wondering to entice interest or spark engagement is frequently designed into programs and materials in ways more contrived than authentic and based more on external motivators than a child’s intrinsic being. This kind of wonder approach can actually dull a more expansive space of wonder for children (because external motivators make it harder to practice intrinsic motivation; Alfie Kohn). There is no need for us to ever spark, entice, or overly structure for wonder. We design (curate) for wonder by allowing for it. It’s much more about what we don’t do and don’t say than anything else. Open-ended spaces full of trust for children and trust for wonder are where authentic wondering awe will flourish.

(Whenever you find these more diluted ideas or applications of wonder, simply bring more awe of wonder to your awareness and they will start to transform.)

Please reach out if you’d like to talk more about wonder, noticing for wonder, and other ways that learning how to notice can invite more wholeness and delight to your life.

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Give it a try:

Try expanding into awe with a leaf or a stone or a button. Look closely and let yourself feel into not-knowing the object. You will likely name some things you notice and have questions. Let them be. They can play with wonder, too. Keep going and let yourself find a place where you feel “lost” or don’t know what you’re wondering about… this is a good sign that you’re tapping more into awe. Stay here for as long as you can. Delight in whatever you find.

Definitions, hmm…

When I looked up dictionary definitions for awe, I was surprised. Meriam-Webster says: an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime. Dictionary.com says: an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like. Robert Plutchik’s Emotion Wheel names awe as a mixed emotion between fear and surprise.

I find the between-ness or possible combinations of emotions noted in these definitions interesting. For me, though, I’d describe awe differently. I think of awe as a state of being in a space of expansive unknowing. This definition allows those other definitions to be included because a space of unknowing allows multiple emotions to emerge, but it is more expansive than this, and invites a depth of experience with unknowing without reducing it to emotions that may (or may not) emerge along the way. An experience of awe is more than an experience of emotion/s.

You might also like to read…

“I Wonder” blog piece by Sharon Eakes

Shea Tuttle’s Chapter 6 on whimsy and seriousness in Exactly As You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers

Curious by Ian Leslie; this book remains—hands down—my favorite book about what it means to be curious.

Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

Halfway to Silence by May Sarton

Children’s books that invite awe…

The Whales by Cynthia Rylant

The Other Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor and Peter Parnall

The Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bauer and Ekua Holmes

i live in music by Ntozake Shange and Romare Bearden