The Beauty of Radical Wonder
I have written in the past on the hypnotically dreamy childhood experience, in which hungry curiosity mingled with innocent delight. As children we encountered the world with fresh eyes, a thin slate of preconceptions, and shameless pleasure. As adults it is easy to to lose this somatic consciousness, this curious center-of-gravity that in our modern parlance we boil down to “living in the present”.
This catchphrase serves a purpose but it only captures half the magic, doesn’t it? One of the griped-about hallmarks of adulthood is that our heads feel isolated from our bodies, connected only by a wispy thread, our minds themselves mechanical factories of chores, of admonitions, of repeat slogans. Where is the spontaneity? Where is the wonder? Where is the astonishment at living itself?
With cynical chuckles, we believe we are confined to this prison of prosaic drudgery and disillusioned living for the rest of our days, having shed the chrysalis of childhood long ago. What a dismal verdict! It does not have to be so.
G.K. Chesterton, the bespectacled Englishman and prolific writer of the 20th century was a stalwart defender of preserving the spirit of childhood which he was inclined to associate with instinctual wisdom rather than shallow naivety. Chesterton once wrote that he “preserved out of childhood, a certain romance of receptiveness. . . .”
