A Whisper of Wholeness
Wonder is not a way of living. It is a way of seeing.
Two people stand at the same window as the same sun goes down. The sun and the sky do what they do. Together creating the slow bleed of orange into rose into a violet that has no name. Yet of the two people, one barely registers it. Already thinking about dinner, reaching habitually for their phone, somewhere other than here. Yet beside them, the other goes completely still. Something in the chest releases, letting go of the body, the schedule, the list — and self. Same sky. Same light. Same handful of minutes. And yet one of them witnesses a change in the time of day while the other, briefly, is undone by beauty. The sunset didn't choose between them. They chose. Or rather, something in how they were already seeing chose for them.
I once heard someone share that the deepest shift isn't in what you see. It's in where you see it from. That has stayed with me for years, because it names something we usually get backwards. We think wonder is a reward the world occasionally hands us. A spectacular view. A rare moment. Something impressive enough to break through. But wonder isn’t waiting in the sunset. It is waiting in us. It's the place we see from before our eyes land on anything at all. It is a kind of inner availability, an openness that the noise and the hurry quietly close. When I've missed the most beautiful things in my life, it was almost never because they weren't there. It was because I wasn't. Perhaps wonder isn't something we go looking for. Maybe it's what becomes possible the moment we empty ourselves enough to allow the wonder within to see what is right in front of us.
For further reflection
What ordinary thing might become extraordinary today — not because it changed, but because I finally saw it from a place of wonder?