On Being Amazed
Photo by Fidel Fernando
This is the final instalment of my ten-part Good Burdens series.
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Let us be the ones who have joy; who choose love over fear.
Think with me for a moment about the English word wonderful. Wonder + full. Full of wonder. It doesn’t simply imply that something is great, or of high quality: it suggests that we stand in fascination at how uniquely and impressively… itself it is.
There’s a reason this chapter in Good Burdens comes immediately after Be Brave; in our modern world, perhaps more than at any other time, being amazed- full of wonder- takes courage. We have to let our cynicism go and appreciate something unique without the urge to pick it apart. We have to fight off the FOMO that would make it a moment of envy and self-loathing. We have to be willing to let others see us show unreserved emotion about something that they may not think is as amazing as we do- a vulnerability that could brand us as unsophisticated or naive.
It takes guts to allow a childlike experience of “Wow…” to wash over us.
The algorithm doesn’t like it when we experience emotions for free.
There are many, many ways we can begin to (re)condition ourselves for wonder. All of them are worth cultivating.
Let Curiosity Be Your Guide
For many adults, the flame of curiosity has all but gone out. In fact, some experts say our pure intellectual zeal begins to wane as early as four years old. We hit equilibrium and quit replenishing our stores. As a result, we have fewer questions and more default settings. “This waning curiosity is not necessarily a bad thing,” says Ian Leslie. “It’s essential in becoming a person who can act on the world, rather than one in thrall to it.” But in his study of the inquiring mind, he has landed on an essential truth: In the game of life, it’s the curious who win.
If you’re paying attention, everything you see — from a fire beetle’s underbelly to the Magna Carta to a pepper plant — and do — from nursing a child to growing vegetables from seed to falling in love — is extraordinary. From this vantage point, any experience can be translated into a joy — and an opportunity to contribute something beyond yourself.
The key is to be open and attentive. To know joy when you feel it.
We Need One Another to Get to Good
Many of us know the thing we ought to be doing, but don’t do it. We feel the pull of our curiosities, the quiet call of wonder but, like much of life: the urgent wins out. We stick to routine. Fall into ruts. Allow a troubling rigidity sap opportunities for exploration. We lose hours, weeks, months to the infinite, deadening scroll.
Often, it’s a community that gets us where we need to go.
One summer I uncharacteristically signed up for a one month “writing flash mob” — a kind of loose pop-up writing group. It was outside my comfort zone but seemed like a fun idea.
The lines I wrote that day were some of the loveliest and true I’d had the courage to get down in some time. What a wonder. Curiosity and community helped get me there.
Making Space
Wonder is the opposite of stress. If community is important to our creative contributions to the world, so too is making space to marvel.
For a decade Paul Jarvis ran Sunday Dispatches, a wildly popular newsletter for creatives, the Creative Class course — a masterclass before MasterClass existed — and authored numerous books, including Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business. Today, Paul is a veteran of the online tech world and runs Fathom, a privacy-focused digital analytics company working to make the internet a safer and more equitable place. His personal website, once a source of massive traffic, now simply says this: “I used to have a personal brand and online presence, and now I don’t. I now work at Fathom Analytics.”
“With our minds and houses we can quickly fill it. We need to schedule time and space to explore, and just be open to what may come,” says Paul. To facilitate this, he schedules out full weeks of open time — no interviews, no client work — just space to play and explore, to let wonder and curiosity take the lead.
“It’s just there to be open.”
When you make space for the good burdens you want to nurture in your life, joy inevitably follows.
Staying Open and Storing Up
There is no exact science to curiosity, no direct return on investment. Learning is not that simple. What we know for sure is that our capacity for wonder needs nourishment.
Wonder is a posture in which we hold space for the unique impressions of our lives. There is something important we do in the storing up of things. We are sorting, sifting, making sense of our thoughts and experiences. Holding moments of wonder close, in a compulsively oversharing digital culture, is a rare discipline. One that is necessary for creating good work.
Maybe you need to wade into wonder for to wonder is to be on the way.
The goal is aliveness.
The purpose is love.
Take up the good burden of being amazed.
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This post originally appeared on my dedicated Medium blog. Get your copy of my new book, Good Burdens, wherever books are sold and find the book club discussion guide here.
