Murroe Website
“We are perishing for want of wonder not for want of wonders.” G.K. Chesterton….
If I had one wish this New Year it would be for a renewal of a sense of wonder. It is one of the powerful forces we are born with and one of our most useful and underused skills. It can make each moment new.
A lot of things in daily life would change their hue if we rediscovered the gift of wonder. It is one of the purest forms of joy and it is something we can practice and do almost anywhere – travelling, reading, meeting people or wherever I feel my heart beat or the sun set or the sun rise.
Like any skill, I can lose it – lose the sense of wonder as I move out of childhood or through over familiarity. Hegel, the philosopher, once said that, ‘the familiar precisely because it is familiar is not known”. So true. John O’Donohue puts it even stronger -“familiarity is one of the most subtle and pervasive forms of human alienation.”
To wonder is enriching in itself but it also can be the moment which births new possibilities into my life.
The next time you go for a walk – try to find something to wonder at….the sound of a bird, the colour or shape of a leaf, the beauty of a cloud.