Our world has gotten smaller. We hear this all the time. This isn't really news, I feel like I have kicked that damn horse again. But it's true. We live in a world now where anything and everything you want to know is little more than a few keystrokes away. To make matters worse, the monsters we face everyday are more real than anything our ancestors could have ever dreamt. We have become so mired in reality that we have forgotten that the magic can still exist.
In my past I was so beaten up cooking that I reached the level of jaded. It happens to cooks all the time. Mind you I still love cooking and love well thought out meals and foods made with love. What I mean by jaded is the disdain of the happiness someone can feel for their triumph over something simple and mundane. When you spend all your time working deep in a field you tend to forget that not everyone else does that too.
We tend to be like that in many areas of our lives. I am reminded of a lesson my children once taught me. They saw dust suspended in a sun beam. My wife had told them it was magic, and they danced in it hoping to capture the magic. Now we know the reality, its just dust motes in sunlight. There really is nothing special about it other than a feeling of it being a little dirty (and to think we try to keep a clean house). We forget that the magic can be real. Right then, at that moment the magic was everything to them.
The worst comes when we become so mired in our daily lives that we forget the beauty and magic of something so simple as a sunset. The interplay of reds, oranges, yellows, and then blues from the sky, light up the coming of night. We know why this happens, we understand that it will happen again tomorrow. So we become jaded, if you have seen it once you have seen it a thousand times.
The real trick in life is to suspend your disbelief. When was the last time you looked at the world around you with new eyes. Look around as if you have never seen it before. I guarantee that you will see something again for the first time. You might even see something you never saw before.
I challenge you to look around with childlike wonder, if even for only a moment. Find something you have never seen.
I felt the magic just reading this post! And I love the challenge you pose to "look around with childlike wonder"!
ReplyDeleteIt isn't easy but anything worthwhile never is.
DeleteGreat post. I wish we could turn it on and off like a lightswitch, that "childhood magic". It makes you feel hopeful when you see children who are blissfully ignorant of all that goes on in the world and can still look at everything around them with wonder. If more people used this kind of perspective in their lives I think they would be a lot happier and content.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we have to be willing to let go of what we know to be true, in order to embrace the possibility of wonder.
DeleteNice post Jon,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, we have lost touch with our dreams as every day reality consumes us. We have lost the ability to enjoy the simple things in life and stay in touch with our inner child.
I sometimes wonder if we have too much information at our fingertips now.
DeleteAh yes, harkening back to Coleridge's famous phrase from Biographia Literaria... Teaching is what made me jaded and unmotivated to write. Now that I'm not trying to get 100 kids a day to suspend their disbelief, it's much easier to maintain my own and get back to the creative life.
ReplyDeleteI hope you realize I actually have to look stuff up when I talk to you sometimes...
DeleteVery well said and so very true. If we could bring out the inner child into our daily lives, we would be much more capable of seeing the wonder of it all instead of the challenges... Sigh! That certainly isn't easy to do.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to unlearn what you have learned.
DeleteFantastic post! It reminds me of something I saw on tv yesterday, when TCM was saluting Danny Kaye. His daughter Dena was being interviewed, and she said people misunderstood her father, often describing him as childlike. Whereas he simply reacted to life from his gut, without guile or pretence, which is similar to a child's response. That's a big part of suspending disbelief - drinking in the world around us without a filter!
ReplyDeleteThat is great. Imagine a life in constant wonderment.
DeleteJon,
ReplyDeleteYou are so very right. It is so easy to forget the magic that exists around us every day, getting caught up in our mundane lives. I know that I do not stop and notice the beauty around me often enough. I am thankful and grateful everyday but I forget that I am small speck in this wonderful amazing world.
Great job and reminder,
Jenn
Such a sweet post! I tend to get so cynical, I better look around. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWonderful post! Sometimes when I get stressed I make myself stop and look around me trying to find something wonderfully silly to do, even if it's just a crazy prank on my husband, trying to find a childlike outlook with my imagination and maybe a touch of magic ;-)
ReplyDelete