Letter No. 3: Wonder

I have spent an embarrassing amount of time watching ants.

I still do.

Not because I’m studying them. Not because I’m trying to unlock the mysteries of insect civilization. I simply find them fascinating.

I always have.

As a boy, I could kneel beside an anthill for what felt like hours. The ants never seemed to stop moving. They moved with purpose I couldn’t understand. Some disappeared beneath the ground carrying burdens larger than themselves. Others wandered aimlessly before somehow finding their place in the endless procession.

I wasn’t learning anything.

At least, I didn’t think I was.

I was simply captivated by something most people walked past without a second glance.

Children have a remarkable ability to do that.

They stop to watch ants.

They rescue caterpillars from sidewalks.

They collect oddly shaped rocks as though they’ve discovered buried treasure.

They ask questions that adults abandoned years ago.

To a child, almost everything deserves another look.

Adults are different.

Not because we’ve stopped seeing. We’ve simply become efficient.

We know what ants are. We’ve seen sunsets. We’ve driven that road. We’ve heard that story.

Familiarity quietly convinces us there’s nothing left to discover.

Somehow, I’ve managed to resist that temptation.

Not perfectly.

There are certainly moments when I hurry past things that deserve my attention. But I’ve learned that life becomes surprisingly rich when you keep looking.

Years ago, I was flying into Seattle.

Most of the passengers around me were asleep. Others stared into glowing screens or thumbed through magazines. I happened to look out the window.

Mount Rainier stood above a blanket of clouds in complete silence.

No one pointed.

No one gasped.

The mountain looked as though someone had quietly placed it there while the rest of us were looking somewhere else.

The mountain simply waited, as it had for thousands of years.

Later, I wrote,

“The beauty of Rainier is often missed by the sleeping and familiar.”

I’ve thought about that sentence many times since.

Not because of Mount Rainier.

Because of the word familiar. I wonder if familiarity quietly robs us of wonder.

Not only with mountains. We can become familiar with our spouses…our children…old friends…the streets we drive every day…even our faith.

Eventually, ordinary Tuesday afternoons begin to feel ordinary too.

The extraordinary doesn’t become ordinary because it changes. It becomes ordinary because we stop expecting to discover anything new. That’s one of the reasons I keep writing these letters.

Not to convince anyone that parking lots or shopping carts or paper cups are remarkable. But to remind myself that they might be.

The world is still full of beauty.

Still full of kindness.

Still full of lessons.

Still full of people carrying stories we’ll never know unless we stop long enough to notice.

Perhaps formation isn’t only about becoming wiser. Perhaps it’s also about refusing to lose our capacity for wonder.

Just last week I watched an ant spend nearly five minutes trying to drag a pine needle through an opening half its size.

I smiled.

Apparently…I still watch ants.

Because the world never stopped being extraordinary.

We simply became familiar with it.

Until next Sunday,

George

If this letter reminded you of someone, perhaps send it to them.