Wide-Eyed Wonder

This week, my body resents me. I’m frustrated it’s not healing on day ten of the flu. My body shakes and makes me groan as I try to make sense of my ongoing malaise.

Along the way there’s the tiresomeness of living — a single day, played on repeat. I peer out through the morning mist over the Fraser River, and it seems as if a tangible entropy eats at me.

Then I see my little grandkids play, and chide myself, “Can’t I stretch out and grasp this day with their wide-eyed wonder?”

And I remember a lovely little lady at 99 years old in an assisted living home. Mom experienced a whole slew of losses over the last few years of her life. She lost her balance, her ability to feed herself, and her ability to use her mind and vocalize her thoughts. But she still held on to a positive sense of wonder.

In her wordless state, we’d wheel her out on a crisp autumn day. She’d get her bony forefinger out from under her shawl and point at the remaining fall flowers as we wheeled down the sidewalk.

I pivoted her chair to face into a hydrangea bush with a few remaining flowers arching over the sidewalk. The nearest bloom was just a few inches from her knees.

Cupping the flower gently in her hand, she exclaimed, “Oh, oh!” And then in a weak warbly voice, she started to sing out her joy – a wordless melody of thanksgiving to a single flower.

One of mom’s friends, a younger lady in the facility, always had a ​quick​ verbal jab for me. I once asked her, “So what do you do when the days feel long?”

She kept looking straight ahead as ​she pushed the button on the remote​. I knew she had only a faint hope that this show would be something interesting.​

​She paused, “Oh, we just endure.”

The contrast caught me. I’m sure Mom had long tiring days also, but I doubt she’d ever think she was just enduring. She seemed to hold an eagerness, a wide-eyed childlike wonder as to what the day could be.

When I reach into the wildness of wonder, it feels like time can bend, and hours can feel like minutes. There’s a shift in what I scale as important and urgent. I look to connect to everything around me.

Little notices occur, like a humbling, comforting sensation of the moisture in the air. And the everydayness of life’s routines become uniquely special.

Wonder holds a deep, internal stillness that pauses the relentless noise of our rational minds. And in the quiet room of my soul there’s a soft, reverent silence.

I wonder what you would do in that room? It’s up to you.

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I would love to connect with you on LinkedIn or Facebook.

See you next week,

Grayson

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