“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
W.B. Yeats
There is a newspaper girl I always see on my walk to work.
She stands in the train station handing out copies of the Metro and in a singsong voice she calls out to the passing crowds “have a wonderful day!”, which always strikes me as an awfully cheesy thing to say.
I mean, who really cares what sort of day strangers have? And who are you to demand such a thing of me? I bristle at the very suggestion; I’ll have whatever sort of day I want, thank you very much. Or perhaps more accurately, I‘ll have whatever sort of day comes at me.
But then I got to thinking about the word wonderful, and heard it for the first time as “wonder-full”. To have a day full of wonder is really a pretty excellent suggestion.
What is wonder? Wonder is a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar or inexplicable. It’s an experience of awe; a positive feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world.
Wonder strikes me as a childlike thing and indeed children are full of it. As a child, the world is fresh and full of these awe-inspiring experiences.
But what about adults? How do we get our wonder?
One way, quite obviously, is to seek out new experiences. Take a dance class, listen to beautiful music or travel to a new and exciting place; there are many ways to find wonder.
Nature itself seems to have an uncanny ability to invoke it, whether it’s an amazing sunset, a waterfall or the view from a mountaintop after a long hike.
And then there is a third option: to open ourselves up to the wonder all around us. If we can just quiet our minds a minute and take a break from all the distractions. If we can put our phones down, get out of our heads, stop planning for tomorrow and see the beauty that surrounds us.
Everyday wonder is found in a shared smile and an unexpected conversation. It’s revelling in the details: the vibrant scarf of a passing stranger and a mug of warm coffee. It’s a day of small kindnesses and quiet moments in between all the delicious hustle bustle of life and it leaves me feeling at once small and suddenly connected to everything that surrounds me – even the newspaper girl in the middle of that swirling crowd of commuters.
So yes, thank you newspaper girl, I will have a wonder-full day.