Wonderstuff

As we hurtle towards the summer holidays, this week is end-of-term school report week. It always makes for interesting reading – anyone else get the ‘are you sure you’re talking about MY kid?’ feeling sometimes?

Naturally, I’m proud of their various endeavours and am always intrigued to read about their ‘next steps for learning’ which, in my day, were ‘areas for improvement’.

But the single loveliest sentence was one teacher stating our lad had a ‘beautiful sense of wonder’ which, in the teacher’s view, was a significant strength.

Aside from bringing a huge smile to my face and a wee tear to my eye, it made me think about my own sense of wonder.

Being curious about the world around us in innate when we’re small, but something happens to many (most) of us as we Grow Up. It has definitely happened to me to an extent over time.

Wonder one day realises its bad cousin, Cynicism, has moved in, with cool shades and attitude, shuffling all the paperwork and making itself comfy, so Wonder packs up and exits sadly stage left. And we don’t even notice…

Wonder helps us grow, learn, and enjoy life. As we rack up knowledge and experience, our tendency to wonder seems to fade little by little, yet there is SO much out there to wonder about.

Personally, I get no joy out of being around cynics. So, how do we show Cynicism the door and welcome Wonder back with open arms?

Being around mini humans helps us to remember it’s an incredible, amazing, flawed yet remarkable world we live in.

So my note-to-self is: get back to viewing the world the way a 6 year old does.

Let’s bring back the wonder.

#sparky #curious #engaging #logical