Speaker 1: Us will studious. Welcome to the Stillness Journal. I'm Maya,
Speaker 1: and today I want to talk about wonder the kind
Speaker 1: that gets quiet as we grow older, the kind that,
Speaker 1: if we are honest, we have been missing for a while.
Speaker 1: Not the loud wonder of fireworks or first love, the
Speaker 1: quieter one, the one that lives in the way light
Speaker 1: falls through a window at a particular hour, in the
Speaker 1: way a child looks at a beetle on the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: In the way your breath feels when it has been
Speaker 1: deep and slow and you suddenly notice you are still here.
Speaker 1: If there is a part of you that has been
Speaker 1: feeling a little flat lately, a part that notices the
Speaker 1: days are passing without much texture, a part that watches
Speaker 1: other people seem to find joy in small things and
Speaker 1: wonders where yours went. This practice is for that part,
Speaker 1: the part that has been moving through life on autopilot,
Speaker 1: the part that has been doing all the right things
Speaker 1: but feels like the color has drained out of them,
Speaker 1: the part that misses something but cannot quite name what
Speaker 1: it is. We live in a world that has in
Speaker 1: many ways explained wonder away. We know how stars work,
Speaker 1: we know why leaves change. We know the science of
Speaker 1: almost everything beautiful, and somewhere in the process of explaining
Speaker 1: it all, we lost the part of us that was
Speaker 1: supposed to stand in front of it and feel amazed.
Speaker 1: We traded wonder for knowing, and knowing is useful, but
Speaker 1: it is not the same thing, and the cost of
Speaker 1: the trade, I think, has been larger than we realized
Speaker 1: that your capacity for wonder is not gone. It has
Speaker 1: only gone quiet. It is still in you, underneath the
Speaker 1: layers of efficiency and productivity and getting things done. It
Speaker 1: is the part of you that pauses sometimes when you
Speaker 1: did not expect to, the part that gets unexpectedly moved
Speaker 1: by a piece of music, The part that watches someone
Speaker 1: you love sleep and feels a strange tenderness you cannot
Speaker 1: quite justify. That part is still alive. It has been
Speaker 1: waiting patiently for you to remember it. Wonder is a
Speaker 1: strange thing. It does not announce itself. It does not perform.
Speaker 1: It is, in fact, almost the opposite of performance. It
Speaker 1: is the feeling you get when the performing part of
Speaker 1: you finally let's go, when you stop trying to be
Speaker 1: impressive or impressive to yourself, and you let the moment
Speaker 1: be what it is. Wonder is what remains in you
Speaker 1: when the striving stops. It is the soft residue of
Speaker 1: being truly present. And I think we have been taught
Speaker 1: without realizing it, that presence is not productive, that if
Speaker 1: we are not doing something with a moment, we are
Speaker 1: wasting it. That pausing to notice is somehow indulgent or lazy,
Speaker 1: or self indulgent. And so we have built lives that
Speaker 1: move us through our days without ever really arriving at them.
Speaker 1: We check the boxes, we attend the meetings, we make
Speaker 1: the meals, we answer the messages, and the wonder if
Speaker 1: it tried to surface, found no room, so it went quiet.
Speaker 1: Settle in if you can, let the body find a
Speaker 1: place where it does not have to produce, Let the
Speaker 1: eyes soften, let the breath go slow. You are not
Speaker 1: here to understand wonder. You are not here to analyze it.
Speaker 1: You are here to let it back in, to remember
Speaker 1: what it felt like before you had a name for it,
Speaker 1: To let the small things in your day become large again.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we lose wonder because we lose time
Speaker 1: nine clock time. We have plenty of that, we lose
Speaker 1: inner time, the kind of time where you can stand
Speaker 1: in a garden for ten minutes and watch a bee
Speaker 1: move between flowers, The kind of time where you can
Speaker 1: hear the rain and not need to do anything about it.
Speaker 1: The kind of time where you can sit with someone
Speaker 1: you love and not need to fill the silence. That
Speaker 1: kind of time has become rare, and without it, Wonder
Speaker 1: has nowhere to land. And I do not think this
Speaker 1: is our fault exactly. I think it is the season.
Speaker 1: I think the world is loud right now. I think
Speaker 1: there is a lot to be afraid of. I think
Speaker 1: there is a lot to keep up with. And I
Speaker 1: think the nervous system, in the face of that loudness
Speaker 1: does what nervous systems do. It goes into a kind
Speaker 1: of survival mode. It narrows, It focuses on what is
Speaker 1: urgent and lets what is beautiful go by. That narrowing
Speaker 1: is not a moral failure. It is a body trying
Speaker 1: to keep you safe, and it worked for a while.
Speaker 1: But it has cost, and one of the costs is wonder.
Speaker 1: I want to invite you, in this moment to notice
Speaker 1: that the narrowing is not in itself permanent. The nervous
Speaker 1: system can widen again It does it naturally when the
Speaker 1: conditions are safe, when the room is quiet, when the
Speaker 1: breath is when you are with someone who is not
Speaker 1: asking anything of you, when nothing is on fire. The
Speaker 1: widening is already in you, You've just been too busy
Speaker 1: to notice it. And when the widening happens, wonder is
Speaker 1: what comes to the door. Wonder is the first guest,
Speaker 1: before gratitude, before joy, before peace. Wonder arrives first because
Speaker 1: wonder is the act of noticing that something is here
Speaker 1: at all, that anything, that the world is full of
Speaker 1: things and you are inside it, and you get to
Speaker 1: perceive that by itself is remarkable. It has always been remarkable.
Speaker 1: We just stopped noticing. Notice gently that wonder is not
Speaker 1: the same as happiness. You can feel wonder and be
Speaker 1: grieving at the same time. You can feel wonder and
Speaker 1: be afraid. You can feel wonder in the middle of
Speaker 1: a heart season, because wonder is not about the season.
Speaker 1: It is about the capacity. It is about the part
Speaker 1: of you that is still awake enough to be moved
Speaker 1: by being alive. That part does not require your life
Speaker 1: to be good. It only requires your to be present.
Speaker 1: I want to say something to the part of you
Speaker 1: that thinks wonder is knife. The part that is grown
Speaker 1: up and become serious and learned that the world is complicated,
Speaker 1: and decided that wide eyed amazement is a thing for
Speaker 1: children and people who have not yet been hurt. That
Speaker 1: part is not wrong exactly. It learned someone that if
Speaker 1: you were too soft, you would be wounded, that if
Speaker 1: you were too open, you would be taken from that
Speaker 1: Wonder was a kind of vulnerability, and vulnerability was dangerous.
Speaker 1: And that part has been working very hard for a
Speaker 1: very long time to keep you safe. It built a
Speaker 1: kind of armor. It learned to look at everything from
Speaker 1: a small, professional distance. It stopped letting things in. And
Speaker 1: I want to think it, and I want to tell
Speaker 1: it gently that the armor is no longer required. That
Speaker 1: you are older now and wiser, and you can let
Speaker 1: the armor down in safe places, that wonder, in small doses,
Speaker 1: in safe rooms with safe people, will not destroy you.
Speaker 1: That it might in fact be the thing that saves you.
Speaker 1: There are very small doors through which wonder comes back.
Speaker 1: None of them require you to do anything dramatic. None
Speaker 1: of them require you to take a trip, or change
Speaker 1: your life, or even leave your house. They are all
Speaker 1: right here in the day you're already having. They are
Speaker 1: things like the way steam rises from a cup of
Speaker 1: tea and crawls and disappears. The way a stranger on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk smiles at a baby, and the baby smiles back,
Speaker 1: and the stranger looks lighter for a moment. The way
Speaker 1: the light in your kitchen at four in the afternoon
Speaker 1: has a particular gold to it that does not exist
Speaker 1: at any other hour. The way your dog are your cat,
Speaker 1: or the bird outside your window has a small daily
Speaker 1: life that you get to witness without being responsible for it.
Speaker 1: Wonder lives in noticing that is all it is. Wonder
Speaker 1: is the feeling that arises when you let something be
Speaker 1: more than it is useful for, When you let a
Speaker 1: leaf be a leaf and not a thing to rake,
Speaker 1: When you let a sunset be a sunset and not
Speaker 1: a thing to photograph, when you let a person be
Speaker 1: a whole person and not a problem to solve or
Speaker 1: a roll to fill. Wonder is what happens when you
Speaker 1: stop instrumentalizing the world, when you stop asking what everything
Speaker 1: is for, when you let things and people and moments
Speaker 1: simply be. And I think this is a practice, not
Speaker 1: a permanent state. You will not feel wonder all the time.
Speaker 1: You will feel it and flashes. A flash while you
Speaker 1: are washing dishes, a flash while you are driving somewhere ordinary,
Speaker 1: a flash while you are sitting in a waiting room.
Speaker 1: And if you let the flash arrive instead of pushing
Speaker 1: past it, it will stay day a little longer, it
Speaker 1: will open up a little wider, and by the end
Speaker 1: of the flash, you will feel briefly that you are
Speaker 1: in the right place, that you have always been in
Speaker 1: the right place, that the world, in its strange and
Speaker 1: ordinary way, has been holding you this whole time. I
Speaker 1: want to leave you with a small practice for the
Speaker 1: week ahead. Three times a day, when you notice yourself
Speaker 1: moving quickly through a moment, pause just for a breath,
Speaker 1: and ask what is here that I have been not seeing?
Speaker 1: What is in front of me right now? That is
Speaker 1: more than what it is for the cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: the face of the person next to me, the sound
Speaker 1: of the room, the fact that I am in this
Speaker 1: room at all. Let the moment be larger than its function.
Speaker 1: Let yourself be in it instead of past it. You
Speaker 1: do not have to do this practice for long. You
Speaker 1: can do it for three breaths. You can do it
Speaker 1: while you are brushing your teeth, while you are waiting
Speaker 1: for the microwave. The point is not the duration. The
Speaker 1: POI is the remembering. The POI is letting the small
Speaker 1: world back in. The POI is letting wonder, which has
Speaker 1: been patient, finally find you again as you go through
Speaker 1: the rest of your day. I want you to carry
Speaker 1: this with you. Wonder is not naive. Wonder is not
Speaker 1: a luxury. Wonder is the most adult and the most
Speaker 1: honest response to being alive. It is what happens when
Speaker 1: you stop pretending that you have seen everything. It is
Speaker 1: what happens when you let the world surprise you again.
Speaker 1: And it has been waiting for you, quietly, patiently, in
Speaker 1: the ordinary light, in the small sounds, in the breath
Speaker 1: you are breathing right now. Thank you for being here today,
Speaker 1: Thank you for letting wonder back in, even for a
Speaker 1: few minutes. I will be here next time with another
Speaker 1: Stillness Journal. Until then, let the small things be large,
Speaker 1: let the ordinary be extraordinary, and let yourself be moved
Speaker 1: again by being here. This has been the Stillness Journal,
Speaker 1: extended with maya chen a gentle voice for the part
Speaker 1: of you that is remembering how to feel amazed,