The Good Burden of Being Amazed
This is the final instalment of my ten-part Good Burdens series.
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Let us be the ones who have joy; who choose love over fear.
Think with me for a moment about the English word wonderful. Wonder + full. Full of wonder. It doesn’t simply imply that something is great, or of high quality: it suggests that we stand in fascination at how uniquely and impressively… itself it is.
There’s a reason this chapter in Good Burdens comes immediately after Be Brave; in our modern world, perhaps more than at any other time, being amazed- full of wonder- takes courage. We have to let our cynicism go and appreciate something unique without the urge to pick it apart. We have to fight off the FOMO that would make it a moment of envy and self-loathing. We have to be willing to let others see us show unreserved emotion about something that they may not think is as amazing as we do- a vulnerability that could brand us as lame, uncool, unsophisticated, naive, or dumb.
It takes guts to allow a childlike experience of “Wow…” to wash over us.
The algorithm doesn’t like it when we experience emotions for free.
There are many, many ways we can begin to (re)condition ourselves for wonder. All of them are worth cultivating.
