Why You’re Starved for Wonder and How to Regain It
I don’t usually share my journal with others, but this thought has been preying on my mind for weeks on end, so here begins the open journal of a naturally very private teenage girl:
“I have a passion for life. I am addicted to living. And I think at times that I’ve been deprived far too long….I know God has a plan for me and is in control of my future, but is it true that I can hold, at least as far as is humanly possible, the reins of my own existence? I want to go certain places, and be certain things…It is not so much that I am worried about the future, or that I wish to look ahead in the years down the road like I’ve wanted to before. I just want to begin my future.”
I have fallen into this rut so many times. Five years ago, I wrote journal entries very similar to this one – if only I could just graduate and begin my life, if only I could get a job and start doing something with myself, if only….if only….. Now I’m doing many of the things that five years ago, would have been my nearest goals and the seeming launchpad of my future, and I still feel the same, as if my life hasn’t quite begun yet, and won’t until I do such-and-such amazing achievement, or reach the next pinnacle of my pursuit.
And it’s true, in many ways, I am just beginning life. But I also have already begun life. I’ve been living it for almost 18 years, and while that seems a very short time in relation to the years I will probably live on this earth, and especially in light of the time I will live in eternity, it is also a very long time to feel like you’re not living yet.
And I think so much of this problem has to do with a lack of wonder. We don’t realize that family and home and our daily tasks are the stuff of what life is made of, and envy those seemingly dramatic experiences that spontaneously burst on life’s outer fringes. We have the two dramas reversed: we think the sunrise is the only real part of the day.
Do It Again
Anyone who has read G.K. Chesterton knows that he has quite a lot to say on this staleness in our wonder, but it was this paragraph that first introduced me to the thought that this staleness is broken – it’s not life or maturity or experience; it’s an abnormality, a parasite, a mental disorder that we’ve developed over years of living. Children, when it comes to wonder, perhaps are best at reflecting the truth of the unbroken:
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” 1
We have sinned and grown old. But God.
But God delights in the fresh surprises of the every day. But God finds pleasure in supplying each breath of your existence, every moment. Right now. As you finish this word. But God finds glory in the constant, tingling vibrancy of existence. God is strong enough to exult in monotony. We don’t lose our wonder by experiencing life, but because we have forgotten how to experience life. We have forgotten how to enjoy our enjoyments. We have forgotten how to wonder at wonders.
The Wonder of Things Being Themselves
The first place I notice myself losing my sense of wonder, is in the home. The day-in, day-out drudgery of daily tasks, the constant and distracting clamor of young children, the slow and steady repetition of the same series of hours and duties over and over again. The constant “looking forward” to times when the redundancy is broken by an unexpected outing with friends, or a vacation, or a weekend, seems to provide a constant excuse for ignoring the gift of the present. “I’ve looked forward so much to today! I need to get out more – I have no life.” We say, half-jokingly, half to cover up our honest fears and our sense of aimlessness.
As if life is all made up of the garnish and not the main course.
Chesterton believed that “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” 2 There are no sullen experiences, only sullen experiencers. No uninteresting places or things, only uninterested people. The best discoveries are the things that we first discovered a long, long time ago, and have forgotten to discover ever since then – the ceaseless, constant flow of a world, not only full of miracles, but in itself, miraculous.
We overlook the familiar, and therefore, we never really know it. All of God’s greatest gifts are the things we don’t understand. We don’t see them because we don’t look, and we don’t look because we think we’ve already seen.
“We may scale the heavens and find new stars innumerable, but there is still the new star we have not yet found – that one on which we live.” 3
We are no longer astonished by the wonder of things simply being themselves. We never find ourselves amazed at the “wetness of water, the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud.”4 We speak of men being “manly” and women being “womanly” and fail to admire the complexity of the philosophical depth we have just glimpsed. We fail to be astounded by the sheer vibrancy of life itself, as a living, breathing, thinking, feeling, seeking, glorified being, by being caught up in the ever constant hope of trying to begin it.
Wonder Needs Gratitude
How do we regain our wonder? The first thing we need is gratitude.
We must regard life as a gift, an overflowing ecstasy, a divine mercy and a privilege to enjoy. We must begin by being thankful. C.S. Lewis believed that all of life pointed unending praise to its Source – we look along the sunbeam, and behold, the sun! We look along our gifts, and behold, The Giver!
Gratitude allows us to see things as we haven’t seen them before. It gives us the constant joy of discovery. It enables us to feel and find pleasure in the gifts we are daily given and ignore, the small things we have grown too old to exult in – the crunch of gravel beneath rubber boots, the wet decay of autumn leaves, the warm throbbing of a kitten’s heartbeat beneath your fingers.
It also allows us to see our daily tasks and seeming inconveniences with new eyes. Children are no longer a distraction from life – they are the main characters in life’s ceaseless drama. They provide the rambling, inquisitive, curious script of a great cosmic play we have grown too dull to understand. They ask the questions we lack the imagination to wonder. They are not satisfied with a passive extent of knowledge and experience, but actively scramble towards the vibrancy of existence, and find joy in the menial tasks we have failed to rediscover.
Gratitude shows us that the real pleasure in life is simply being pleased. The real humor of life is simply laughing. The real joy in life is simply being joyful. We place an infinite amount of emphasis on the pursuit of happiness, and never on happiness, itself. We strive to satisfy our discontent with an endless longing for what we think will make us happy without realizing that the only cure for discontentment is, in fact, contentment.
Wonder Needs Humility
So what is the secret to seeing all life as a gift? Humility in the presence of the Giver.
Gratitude and humility go hand in hand with wonder. It is impossible to wonder at something, without feeling grateful for it. It is also impossible to wonder at something without feeling small, without feeling privileged to be able to enjoy it, and without recognizing the fact that it is undeserved.
Chesterton said that “The function of imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange; not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders.” 5
The staleness of our wonder finds its root in pride; in the sullen grown-upishness that hardens itself against saying “Do it again!” with the ceaseless ardor of God and the child. We see ourselves as wanting something more, seeking something more, deserving something more. But how are we to hope in finding happiness in the unattainable more, when we have yet to find happiness in the bounty we have already received, and choose daily to ignore?
Pride not only precedes the fall from the height we had in discovery, it is the fall. But when we become astonished at the things we have hardened ourselves against, and become vulnerable once more to the abounding vitality of existence, when we wonder at how the rain falls, and the eagle soars, and the proud waves of the sea find their limits, then like Job, we are compelled to put our hands over our mouths, and find our longings satisfied with praise.
There is only One Giver in life. One Joy. One Gift. And it is from Him all these things that are too good to be true, find their goodness and their certainty.
Wonder Needs Hope
All our lives we find ourselves looking ahead. But we always root ourselves in the deep mire of either not looking well, or not looking far enough.
That is because when we become saturated in the active vitality of wonder, we find the tingling, pleasure-filled pang of Joy. We not only gain the gift of what we have been daily given, but we gain the memory of something we have lost, and the hope of regaining it.
Augustine was brave enough to ask one of the only questions that matter. He observed that all men desire happiness. But why? “Where did they acquire the knowledge of it, that they so desire it? Where have they seen it, that they so love it?” 6
Our starvation for wonder is not only a deprivation, it is a parasite, and the fact that it exists is a sign that there is something seriously wrong with this world. Water tastes good only when we are thirsty. We recognize the gift only when we realize we have been deprived of it.
Once upon a time, a man rebelled, not against Hell, but against paradise. And ever since then, we are nostalgic for the return of this paradise we have never seen, but yet is so ingrained in the Image we reflect, that we remember it.
But because we refuse to seek its resurrection with gratitude, we attempt to murder it with gluttony. Our entertainment becomes flashier. Our hearts seek greater corruption. Our longings become more insatiable.
Chesterton observed: “Men seek stranger sins or more startling obscenities as stimulants to their jaded sense…They try to stab their nerves to life…They are walking in their sleep and try to wake themselves up with nightmares.” 7
But perhaps our desires are not meant to be stifled, but embraced.
As C.S. Lewis said:
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist. A baby feels hunger well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water….If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it…(probably they) were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise or be unthankful for these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country…I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.” 8
To regain our sense of wonder, we must first recognize our gifts and be grateful for them, and then we must seek the Giver. The pleasures we experience on earth are but imperfect visions of what we were created to enjoy, but in order to seek joy better, we must enjoy better.
Our ever-present longing for the future is not too strong, but too weak. We can’t enjoy the gifts of the present because we have lost our ability to see to Whom they point. We can’t take pleasure in the sunbeams because we have grown accustomed to ignore the Son.
In perhaps, one of Lewis’ most famous sermons, The Weight of Glory, he said:
“If we consider the unblushing promises…and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our desires are not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” 9
Wonder is not only necessary to enjoy the gift of life, but to receive the promises of the Gospel. Christ said that unless we “receive the Kingdom of God like a child” we will “never receive it”. Why? Because we won’t be small enough. Both the believer and the skeptic are broken by the abounding mercy of the Gospel – both find it too good to be true. But the skeptic is crushed into a deeper skepticism, and the believer sinks to his knees.
With the abounding wonder and gratitude and humility of a child, he seeks not to be born, but to be reborn; not life, but resurrection. “Do it again”, he whispers. And our Father, who is younger than we, rejoices and does it again.
Soli Deo Gloria,
1 Chesterton, Orthodoxy, CW 1:263-64
2 Ibid, Tremendous Trifles (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), p. 7
3 Ibid, The Defendant (London: J.M. Dent, 1907), p. 113
4 Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943), pp. 108-119
5 Chesterton, The Defendant, p. 60
6 Augustine, Confessions, Book X
7 Chesterton, Everlasting Man, CW 2:291
8 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp. 67-68
9 Ibid, The Weight of Glory