Why wonder

We appreciate the extraordinary, the novel and the unique. We hunger for the good, work for the better and hope that the hohumdrum pressures and banalities of life will be supplanted by something more magical.

We dream that we can transcend the mundane, that we can escape oblivion, boredom and a life without consequence. If we are capable of wondering, our mind takes flight and dares to dream. Wondering infuses our questioning and our thinking with a spiritual aspect. Children learn that life can be much more than another brick in the wall. As an elementary principal spending lots of time wondering about the dreaming, thinking and questioning of very young children, I found that certain passages resonated intensely with my own impressions and thoughts.

If young ones can maintain a sense of wonder as they pass through early childhood into adolescence and early adulthood, that inclination may inspire much of their questioning. As they yearn to understand and make the best of life, a sense of wonder tilts their thinking forward. They grow bolder and stronger in their questioning, testing the edges and boundaries of conventional reasoning, pushing into new territory, demanding fresh truths and answers.

They will not see school as a time to memorize time honored answers to multiple choice questions. But wondering is not a simple joy ride. It has a dark side. The hunger for meaning is not always satisfied. The comfort of memorizing conventional wisdom and platitudes is traded for a much tougher journey, one that often frustrates, teases and disappoints the earnest student. Satisfying, authentic answers are often elusive.

And not all wondering aims high. Students may wonder about trivial matters. Wonder can slip and slide into mere curiosity, just as curiosity can grow into wonderment. Wondering about fundamental issues and major concerns may take courage and fortitude. These are questions worth wondering about, but answers are unlikely to sprout like spring flowers eager to be picked and displayed.

Only the simple minded find simple answers to such profoundly troubling and challenging questions. Sadly, history is littered with examples of leaders and movements that cut short the wondering and searching for genuine answers to such problems, substituting gimmicks, myths and shadowboxing for real solutions.

If the citizens are mentally soft, they may climb right aboard such movements without asking tough questions or wondering whether the proposals make any sense at all.

At its best, wondering combines doubting and dreaming in a powerful partnership to test value. Sadly, wonder can also serve the interests of social control as politicians extending as far back as the Roman Empire have run a circus of one kind or another in order to win the hearts and minds of the populace. Tribalism, propaganda and marketing depend as much upon magic and wonder as churches, social movements, prophets and revolutionaries.

Some of these uses of wonder are heavenly, inspirational and divine, while others are evil to the core, trusting to the power of magic and wonder to sway the feelings and the fears of unsuspecting folk in order to capture their obedience. A photograph can provoke the most profound emotional reactions, whether they be feelings of wonder or horror.

In current times, these images are used repeatedly in the war for human sympathy for one cause or another. The tie between horror and wonder is strong and the distance between them is all too small. A picture of suffering provokes wondering. A picture of torture provokes horror. The younger citizens of this century are bombarded with such images, whether they be about war or deodorant or clothing.

One cannot learn about the world without absorbing thousands of images directed at shaping our feelings, wishes, dreams and actions by manipulating out natural sense of wonder. This book is dedicated to the proposition that wondering without questioning is a form of surrender, a kind of acquiescence in the face of powerful forces far from benign.

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