WOW: Wonder Fatigue
Closing a day with dear family friends that included swimming alongside a 24-foot-long whale shark, watching sea lions dart around in spirals an arms distance away, and boating through a pod of a hundred dolphins, I sit here writing tired.
This is a day that I would think a blog on wonder would spill right out of my fingers, and it’s not.
For the last few weeks, I’ve noticed myself having to dig a little deeper, to find more stillness before I write to get words down on the page. It’s like I have to cast my line deeper down in the well to the darker places to see what I can pull up.
So today, I am just naming that. I committed to writing 52 blogs on experiences of wonder. About 10 weeks in, and I’m hitting a lull.
One quality of wonder is an experience of newness. We experience awe and wonder when something blows our mind – when it’s something so grand that we’ve never quite experienced something like it.
So, I am curious about whether we can sustain a sense of wonder over say…a year. Are these dips normal? Or is my capacity to experience wonder ultimately improving with this dip like the fatigue from working out — as to say, am I exercising my “wonder muscle”?
Time will tell on this one, and today I call it like it is.
Beauty, nature, and friendship abound, but wonder…in this moment…feels elusive.