The Ten Thousand Wonders of the World
We've given up our sense of wonder, did you notice?
We don't need to wonder about things, we can just google it. We can find out the facts and intellectualize an experience or a thing in our experience. But in doing so we tend to replace the actual, real, truthful aspects of the thing or experience with ideas, definitions, and labels that we reference in our heads.
We seem to think we "know" what everything is after we've listed it under a label, and since we have a label, we decide we don't need to explore it further, we don't need to really examine it in our experience. That's part of the reason we don't notice the wonder in every little creation around us. Every tree and bug and bird has a marvelous world of its own, but we never dive into it and observe them anymore. We pass by things and let them pass us by without paying any attention to them, without wondering at them.
Even at ourselves!
What marvelous creatures we are, our bodies basically run themselves, beating our hearts, breathing, firing neurons. Every little creature and plant has these same sacred qualities of life, yet we basically ignore them. We see a tree and that's what it is to us, we label it and disregard it in our experience. How often do we give the trees a look of wonder, like how are you working? How often do we take them in in their full majesty? Seeing the incredible detail and amazing growth cycle, the way the leaves react to the slightest gust, rattling against eachother.
What about bugs? The world beneath our feet is so incredibly complex but we barely pay attention to it at all. The only thing bugs do is bug most of us. We squish them, swat them, kill them, but when do we take a good hard look at them and see how incredibly complex and beautiful they are. We see a spider and we think SPIDER! Diieeeeeeeee! Regardless of whether it's a tiny little harmless spider or not.
Why don't we wonder at things anymore? Have we learned everything already? Do we know how everything works, does google, do textbooks and documentaries and whatever other resources we have, do they know all the answers, do they know what's causing this miracle that we call life? Do they understand the inherent intelligence in nature?
It sure doesn't seem like it. It just seems like we've replaced the mystery in the world with false knowing, we're pretending to know. The kind of knowing where we think we understand things because we've defined and labeled them, not because we actually understand them.
There are wonders in this world everywhere we look, I step into my backyard and I just marvel at it. My lawn was exploding with life from the recent rains. There was the grass shooting up, dandelions shooting up and other plants thriving, plants we call weeds that have just as much beauty as the grass and flowers.
Countless different bugs, each so detailed and complex looking you could observe it for a full fifteen minutes before you even understood it's shape. I've had flies land on me and I just think Damn fly, you're actually pretty amazing, you've got all these tiny hairs, brilliant eyes, lightning quick reflexes, and some weird elephant tongue thing to eat the dead skin or oil or whatever your grabbing off of me. Each one is unique among it's peers and their are thousands of varieties right beneath our feet.
It confuses me sometimes, how did I miss it before? How could I just pass by the incredible complexity and beauty in the world? Was I so trapped in my mind that I just took everything as the label that I and everyone else had given the thing. Each of these things has it's own wonder, each of these creatures is absolutely amazing. We live in this world with so much variety and beauty that we just ignore sometimes unless it's brand new to us. Once we see it we label it and then we can see it again and replace our awareness and wonder of it with our label and totally miss what's actually there.
Why not wonder at things, take a harder look, see what life reveals.
I just realized how much I’ve missed seeing your posts recently.
I’m glad to have found this one today. Last night I listened to Adyashanti talk about listening. I see that as another aspect of this same topic, as listening is how you leave room for the wonder.
If you think you already know, you don’t listen. Even when someone is talking, if you think you already know what they believe and what point they are about to make, you don’t listen to what they actually say. 90% of the time they may be predictable, but that remaining 10% is where all the growth and discovery lies! That’s the coming into actual relationship with each other.
I’m deepening my commitment to listening to life in response to his talk last night. I really appreciate finding this post written weeks ago by you helping me see yet another facet of why that’s so important.
I’m guessing you’re really busy with the baby, but if you get a chance, come say hi sometime. :)
.... Oh, and please tell me where I can get one of that hammock!
True listening is so hard! I've been really working on it in my own life. I used to be so ready to say what I want to say I'd forget to really listen to the person talking! That made me always misinterpret what someone is saying.
Thanks so much for stopping by, honestly it hasn't been the baby, I just haven't been writing lately, I've had some significant changes in my perception and been doing some internal work. I will get writing here soon, I mostly wanted to find a new direction, one that was less parroting and more real, so I've been doing a lot of reflecting, but I miss the community and will be back. I really love writing so I'm starting to get the itch.
Hammock was a gift! I did a quick google and there are a bunch of similar ones on hayneedle.com
You have a minor grammatical mistake in the following sentence:
It should be its own instead of it's own.fixed
Great post perfectly aligned with some of my own contemplations lately.
I truly miss this authentic curiosity and rejoicing like a child. Before I came to Steemit I virtually didn't use any AI at all because I actually enjoy being in nature, reading books, having authentic conversations, experiencing adventures much more than engaging in virtual on-goings. In a sense, I feel as if the real reawakening of wonder and marvel only returns once the external circumstances have truly aligned with our inner world, because we are just so aware of our inner work that we want to "get certain things done for good" before we can 100% enjoy everything again it its purest essence.
To your points with the life forms: We cry fool at killers' murdering, yet in a sense killing a fly is nothing else, it is just that Humans' self-declaration as being the most sentient life form
actually makes us the most non-sentient life form...
Same here, previously I was very tech focused, but then a few years back I dove into nature and yoga and all sorts of other adventures, steemit and social media are a love hate for me, like I know we really need them to network and build certain types of communities, but we miss out on the communication involved with nearness, like body language or vibration.
We seem to think we are more important than everything else, and it even goes as far as groups of people and social class, hopefully the flaw in that thinking is revealed to everyone shortly, because it's a poisonous thought
Salient post Jake. funnily enough I was pondering something similar yesterday whilst painting a customer's house. A bug flew onto the wet paint, this always upsets me, even though I know it is inevitable.
The issue for me is how as humans we have 'advanced' so quickly that nature hasn't been able to adapt to that 'advancement.'
I know the wise answer is always love-in-action, I hope we can all feel this and move in that direction, by adopting your practice of enjoying and revelling in the mystery and wonder of life. And maybe we will find a more harmonies way to exists as part of nature, rather than in labelling and controlling it as tohugh we are not at hte heart of it.
I truly believe we will move towards harmony with nature in all we do, we have the capability to do it, it just hasn't been prioritized, but really it should be because we have so much to learn from said harmony and from simply observing nature, it's where many of our best inventions get their inspiration from
love there is a grammar nazi on here, I think everyone should still know how to write correctly. I know I make a lot of little mistakes.
Very sage post, but I still wonder about things. maybe the older generation isn't so quick to look things up or maybe the fact we didn't have all this information at our fingertips was part of that.
For a long time I just blew past stuff, like if I knew what it was called I knew it... Ya, actually like the grammar nazi
sometimes you just have to sit and look around, the world is a marvelous place and when you think about it and all the creatures it boggles the mind. how many different insects are there just in Montana, and we don't have nearly as many as other places.