Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder by Huffington Arianna

Author:Huffington, Arianna [Huffington, Arianna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780804140850
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

Wonder

Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the extent of the oceans, and the courses of the stars, and omit to wonder at themselves.

—ST. AUGUSTINE

Blast-off on a Journey to Inner Space

ON THE morning after the launch of HuffPost Germany in October 2013, I was in a car on my way to the airport from the center of Munich. It was raining, which gave everything a beautiful, almost magical, shimmer. All the buildings and trees seemed wrapped in wonder. Yet when I arrived at the airport, everyone I talked to was complaining about the rain. We were all experiencing the same weather but with very different results.

Wonder is not just a product of what we see—of how beautiful or mysterious or singular or incomprehensible something may be. It’s just as much a product of our state of mind, our being, the perspective from which we are looking at the world. At a different time, in a different city (maybe even most times in most cities), I, too, might have been annoyed by the rain. But at this particular time, in this particular city, what came to my mind instead was a poem by Albert Huffstickler (I know his name sounds German, but he’s from Texas):

We forget we’re

mostly water

till the rain falls

and every atom

in our body

starts to go home.

Countless things in our daily lives can awaken the almost constant state of wonder we knew as children. But sometimes to see them we must look through a different set of eyes. The triggers are there. But are we present enough to experience them?

When my girls were just a few years old, I remember one of those clear California evenings when the stars seemed close enough to touch. Christina and Isabella were cradled in the crook of each of my arms as we lay on the grass in the backyard, watching the universe go by. While Isabella was stretching out her little hands, trying to peel a star off the rind of heaven, Christina was, as usual, asking questions: “Mommy, what makes it go?”

Her question was as old as time itself. When men began to wonder about the hidden causes of things, they were on their way to the discovery of science. Our proud scientific age is rooted in wonder. “Men were first led to the study of philosophy,” wrote Aristotle, “as indeed they are today, by wonder.” Physicist James Clerk Maxwell’s first memory was “lying on the grass, looking at the sun and wondering.”

That sense of wonder is often stronger when it’s provoked by things ordinary and unassuming—our children’s faces, rain, a flower, a seashell. As Walt Whitman said, “After all, the great lesson is that no special natural sights—not Alps, Niagara, Yosemite or anything else—is more grand or more beautiful than the ordinary sunrise and sunset, earth and sky, the common trees and grass.”

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