The Importance of Embracing Wonder in Our Life and Career Paths
We don't have to throw our sense of wonder and curiosity out with our childhood toys. On the contrary, our innate ability to seek out wonder and the joy it brings can help us shape our futures and relieve lethargy and boredom that can add to our jaded adult selves and professionals in time.
It is a sense of wonder that instils creativity, and while there is a belief that we can become less creative as we age, this is an avoidable fate. Loss of creativity doesn't occur because we grow older; it happens because we grow out of our sense of wonder. We become jaded, weary and less motivated to enter into a process of curiosity and wondering where to go next in our lives and work and what it could give us back on a whole health level.
We block our perspective with a lack of imagination. Direction becomes harder to determine as we dim our natural creative self. Eventually, the lights can go out, leading many to career and life anxiety. We lose our "why". But before finding our "why", we must wonder about it. We lose our sense of awe and wonder, and we can lose valuable time stressing over career prospects, social status, measures of success on others' terms, and the banalities and drama here online. Reclaim our wonder, and we can find the inner strength, courage and creativity to make some changes and take the first step.
Wonder is beyond reason, and before it, it is an emotion we face with a mystery.
And sometimes, that first step is to embrace everything mysterious about your next move, the unknown knowns. Yes, it will be full of fear, but fear can instil forward thinking and the magic that is momentum. So while many are reading this, the "what is next for me?" thoughts amidst their internal chatter and chorus of jaded self-statements such as "is this all left for me now ?" Well, there is a mystery. What if we allow ourselves to embrace the mysterious to give us perspective and rationalise context?
Albert Einstein notes in The World as I see it that "the mysterious" is not only "the most beautiful experience we can have" but also the most basic emotion that is at the fore of true art and science. He states, "whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."
And yet, as we make our way through school, college, and work, there can be so much of this mystery and wonder stripped back. So many lights go out in the process and dimming of our deliberate direction. We are told to grow up, get on with it and be practical in our endeavours. So go be the hardworking professional on a career ladder, letting our lights go out and losing our sense of curiosity only to find we have had our ladder inevitably up against the wrong wall all the time.
And then we realise our loss of curiosity and wonder can kill our sense of self and manifest in other whole health deterioration from an emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual context. We don't have to revert to our inner child by no means, as this reiterates the idea that we lose our sense of wonder as we age. We are adults. Yes, we have bills to pay, and we know the factual context of reality. However, we can still teach ourselves to access wonder and to look at our options with such curiosity. As we can train our emotions and most of our senses to serve us in many life stage phases, we can teach ourselves to wonder, access practical wisdom and realign our lives and work in time.
When was the last time you embraced wonder in your life and work?
Can you recall how it made you feel?
What did it give you, and why was this important for your whole health and sense of personal and professional self?
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Image Credit: Chris Malinao Burgett Unsplash
