The great scientist Louis Pasteur once said: “To know how to wonder and question is the first step the mind can take towards discovery.”
Luigi Ballerini, a children’s author and psychotherapist, also reminds us of this and his work is the inspiration that lies behind this article. [1] He wrote: “After all, wonder is nothing more than a form of trust […] It is the idea that there is still a world to discover, to understand and to encounter. This explains why the loss of wonder is so serious: without it, life becomes flat, reduced to the repeatedly gazing wearily and no longer seeing anything. […] If we lose our capacity for wonder, we do not become more realistic or efficient; we simply lose the chance to be stirred by reality, to recognise that we ourselves can continue to change and improve through what we encounter.”
A sense of wonder reminds us that not everything depends on us. It is an invitation to embrace each moment with an open heart, to recognise what life is trying to tell us and to be grateful for it. A sense of wonder evokes amazement – that extraordinary ability children have to open themselves up to life and relationships; these dimensions are fundamental to the human condition and for millenia have been key to the adventurous development of human thought. They teach us to step back from our own perspective in order to reach out to the people who may be waiting for us, who share our daily struggles and our hopes.
Today, the challenges posed by social media and artificial intelligence seem to be stifling this capacity for awe and wonder: have we already seen everything there is to see? Above all: are we becoming desensitised to everything that happens? It is often the small and seemingly insignificant actions that are capable of rekindling that sense of wonder.
To be amazed means keeping alive the capacity to marvel, to learn from new experiences and to recognise the value of the people and situations we encounter, without resigning ourselves to indifference when we meet with pain and suffering. It means having the courage to look at reality with attention and openness, putting ourselves in others’ shoes and offering a listening ear and support without judgement. It also means caring for those who are living through important or complex situations.
There are so many everyday stories of hardship, of illness, of lives that seem lost or meaningless: yet there is always a chance that the ending has not yet been written. In families and in care settings, we are often amazed to see signs of the most powerful revolution of all – that of a greater love that produces outcomes that are very different from what is expected. Let us allow ourselves to be vulnerable and humble and so be amazed by what happens. Let us share these moments of awe and wonder with other people and so impact upon our relationships and society in the future.
THE IDEA OF THE MONTH is currently produced by the Focolare Movement’s “Centre for Dialogue with People of Nonreligious Beliefs”. It is an initiative that began in 2014 in Uruguay to share with non-believing friends the values of the Word of Life, i.e. the phrase from Scripture that members of the Movement strive to put into practice in their daily lives. Currently, THE IDEA OF THE MONTH is translated into 12 languages and distributed in more than 25 countries, with adaptations of the text according to different cultural sensitivities. www. dialogue4unity.focolare.org
[1] https://www.avvenire.it/idee–e–commenti/lasciarsi–stupire–dalla–meraviglia–quello–che–i–ragazzi–ci–ricordano_109483)
Photo © Srinivas-Bandari-Unsplash
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