"Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder"

E. B. White (Italics added)

On Christmas Alina was excited about watching the new Pixar movie "Soul". (Spoiler: Skip this paragraph if you haven't watched it.) As we watched the plot unfold, it struck me that the thing that was missing in 22's "life" was wonder. When we meet her, she's numb and her existence feels meaningless. We learn that she's had many mentors try to give her a "spark" for life, and that each subsequent teacher failed to understand that she didn't need more, she needed wonder. It wasn't until she started experiencing wonder that she realized why her life was worth living. 

There's so much to learn from wonder. 

Admittedly, I've been thinking a lot about wonder, so I noticed this theme in "Soul". My professor at BYU, Dr. Ralph Hancock, taught that wonder saves: It save us from the endless consumerism consummated by Niccolo Machiavelli's "stupefaction and satisfaction" under his new "prince". Machiavelli wants us to be enslaved by our passion for material acquisition and stupefied by the fear of violence and loss. In this position, we are distracted from seeking meaning, and we fail to make space for wonder. 

In response to Machiavelli, French philosopher Phillipe Beneton suggests that when we lose our sense of wonder to "material satisfaction" we become bound hand and foot. We literally become immobilized for producing the kind of life that we want to live: The kind of life that offers real meaning. We need to be concerned about the impact of reducing purpose to materialism. He argues that wonder has the power to save because it can also lead us back to our purpose. That is a really powerful truth for me.

Yesterday an inspiring friend shared a quote from Mary Ellen Edmunds— actually her book title— "You Can Never Get Enough of What You Don't Need." The things we don't need never satisfy, and when we don't realize that, we never stop trying to consume them. It becomes an endless cycle. To borrow from Mark Monson, it becomes "the feedback loop from Hell". 

But, returning to wonder, people who have done amazing things in this world are people who are filled with wonder. Wonder inspires them to act and to do. President Nelson was a pioneering heart surgeon in the 1950's-1970's, literally changing the scape of heart surgery, because he never ceased to wonder about the eternal laws that govern its function. He was inspired by wonder. 

Every remarkable person I know is shaped by wonder. And the same is true for every remarkable leader in history. We need to experience a sense of wonder. Wonder is a human need because life without wonder isn't sustainable. And we need to surround ourselves with people who fearlessly wonder and act. 

Since becoming a single "mum", I've struggled with panic. As life slowed down with my graduation (YESYESYESYESYESYES), I realized one of the difficulties with the way I was bearing my responsibilities is that I wasn't taking the time to experience a sense of wonder. It felt super hard actually. I really struggled because I just felt so overwhelmed and doubted myself. It was really dark sometimes. At times we go through seasons when we need to hold on to others to survive. Looking back, these times have created a tapestry of meaning for me in which I get to employ a sense of wonder for all God has provided for me. I wonder at the love of my Heavenly Father, I wonder at all of the amazing people He inspired to lift and bless us, and I wonder at the great care that He takes to provide for each one of us. Even for seemingly minute things. There's so much to wonder about in the world, and there's so much God has in store for us. 

In quick parting, I just want to leave you with a few of my favorite lines from Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance". I know it's corny, and country (gasp!), but it has always touched my heart, and summarizes what I wish for each of you:  

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance... I hope you dance...

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance,
Livin' might mean takin' chances, but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake, but it's worth makin',
Don't let some Hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance. Dance.

Thanks for being here working out your salvation with me, friend. As always. 

I've been thinking about our cultural need for comparison and certainty. Both ultimately thwart our ability to connect with one another as a society. Depending on our degree of unawareness, both can bring us extra measures of dysfunction and pain unnecessarily. 

I have a story. I attend group therapy. This week I was sharing my struggles as a single parent feeling limited, and wondering about whether this was holding me back. And also desperately wanting to get past this difficult stage in my life. I'm not very patient, you see. I have so many dreams I'm striving to realize and trying not to lose hope in the immensity of the struggle I feel. It's hard, and really, that's the message for which I was seeking support this week.

I finished sharing this particular thought, and a married woman in the group leaned in and said, "I feel like a single parent." Beautiful, right? This is the goal of group therapy, to deepen our ability to be vulnerable and to connect with each other. Her emotional bid was meant to be connective and sweet. A few days later, I see that she just wanted to connect with me. Unfortunately, that's not what I felt or perceived at the time. And I guess it's what I learned from both perspectives of this experience that I want to share.  

How little understanding we really have of someone else's situation until we walk with them; and how invalidating it can sometimes feel to hear "I feel like ____ too" when someone else hasn't been through what we've been through. I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that kind of statement. And I think what we're trying to say to each other is "I see you, I can relate to you, you matter, and we're in this together". It often feels more like a slap in the face, especially when I'm stuck in an unhealthy space. Honestly, I couldn't get past wishing my family lived in the same state as me, or that I had someone to leave my kids with, or that someone else was also responsible for helping me with my bills (or anything for that matter, other than Jesus). And these comparisons came between she and I and my ability to connect with her. 

Ultimately, I did the same thing in response: I compared, and used it as a wedge.

In that moment I said, "see, I feel so angry when people say that." I do in a very real and honest way. My ten second justification is that it's really hard to hear someone say that they feel like a single parent when there is another person there. It's hard to grasp the depth of loss when the partnership is over. Even when you know it's coming, you can't be totally prepared. 

BUT. I also know that there's real suffering in both healthy and unhealthy relationships. And it's not about whose is worse, it's about listening and loving and believing in the future. It's about connecting. And it's about the power of connection, and focusing on that power. 

So, the thing that I sensed and didn't have the insight to articulate at the time (or the maturity) is that comparative suffering isn't real. We all suffer. She could have said that she was suffering, too. Even though she didn't, it doesn't mean I can't understand her meaning. Suffering is inherent in the human condition because we all live through disappointments, losses, and crises. And it's these difficult challenges that shape much of our stories. The most important piece of these stories of suffering is the connections and ties that we build into our lives in response. Literally, these communities have the power to save us and change our trajectory.

Neuroscientists, immunologists, therapists, and cardiologists (to name a few ologies) have known for decades that the impact of positive social support is powerful in allowing our organism to thrive. Our brains tend to function properly and tend to relate to fewer incidences of mental disorders, our immune systems better protect us from illness, we tend to perform better in the tasks of life, and our hearts even have mechanisms that defend against heart damage under duress. It's remarkable how we've been programmed to thrive with social support. The buzz word is empathy. We can get through anything with empathy. Thanks, Dr. Brown. 

Often today, what we're experiencing is the exact opposite of love. We're more divided than ever. We compare, criticize, and despair. We suffer in silence, and we're alone. I feel as sad as anyone that this is what society has adopted, but then I'm also part of the problem. It's important to own that part.

I want to detour for a second: I was watching "Becoming" on Netflix earlier this week, and noticed that Michelle Obama's brother was wearing a t-shirt that said, "it's harder to hate up close". It stuck with me. I realized that's part of what happened in group. I didn't let someone get close to me, and maybe they didn't really let me get close to them. We all had some kind of barriers to connection. Then I realized that we all do this. We think we have the solutions to someone else's suffering, we think we know the "right" way to engage in politics or medicine, we wed ourselves to ideals and ideologies over people, and as a result people are getting hurt. We're collectively suffering, and we're collectively causing that suffering because we don't understand what it looks like to connect.

We need to value seeing each other honestly.

I wish I could tell you that the other members in the group and I were able to find peace in our connection whether or not we agreed. As I processed this experience with one of my most insightful friends, she observed that we've lost this ability somehow in our culture. Or, maybe it's our generation. We're lacking the skills to connect with each other and validate each other's stories whether or not we agree, and instead we're obsessed with the details. We can't see the forest for the trees. 

When the people around us are lost in their personal forests, it's so important that we recognize this and forsake the trees.

Speaking of trees, I was listening to a TED Talk on environmental conservatism, and the speaker offered this statement, "we conserve what we love, we love what we understand, and we understand what we've been taught." So then in my mind, this idea followed: If we're taught how to be a community, then we will likely understand how to conserve that community. I thought this was so brilliant that I ran for paper, rewound the talk, and slowly played it back through as I wrote it down:

"We conserve what we love, 
we love what we understand,
and we understand what we've been taught."

Oh my gosh, we need to be taught how to understand each other. It's so simple. We just need to see each other. "It's harder to hate up close." Hell yes, brother! I hear you. I dare you to learn someone's story of suffering and pain, and see how they overcame it and the people they loved, and still try to hate them. I'm not sure it's possible if we honestly know how to do it. 

There's something funny about that conservation statement. When I read it back to my friends over zoom or the phone, it always sounds like I'm saying "can serve" rather than "conserve". And that's an intriguing idea too. "We can serve what we love, we love what we understand, and we understand what we've been taught." Maybe a better conceptualization is:

"We can serve who we love, 
we love who we understand, 
and we understand who we've been taught to understand."

Maybe it's not about certainty and comparisons at all. Maybe it's just about coming back together to learn what it means to be a community, learning to love and value each other's stories, and serving formative roles in each others' lives. Maybe the trees never really mattered at all. 

What does it mean to be a writer?

Is it someone who has something to say, or someone saying something? What’s the difference? How can you tell when it’s one or the other?

Does it mean being honest and sharing a view into some part of humanity that I think I comprehend? Maybe, but not always.

It may not be that I’m right or that I see the whole picture, but it might mean that I help someone else consider things from a new starting point. It may be that I am the foundation for others to stand upon, and in growing taller, then they add something remarkable and significant to the world. Possibly more noticed and possibly significant, not to really claim significance themselves. 

It may be that the electrical and chemical synapses in my brain, translated into this digital “figurative” paper, then have the power to train yours in on some new idea that has the power to change the world that we need. Or is it just the world of your synapses?

Does it matter which if it’s the power of bringing about some kind of change? Do the same synapses fire when we read and/or write a shared passage? Do we ever really experience shared things the same way even if the brain "reacts" the same? Surely your matter is still somehow different than mine and that MATTERS. These differences in "the same things" allow us to see the world in a new way. Probably. Adding color, joy, brightness, never before considered terrain.

Maybe it’s just for the joy of thinking until one day you come upon something that so perfectly fits a necessary skillset that you realize you were being prepared all along for that exact thing and moment. But prepared by... what? And does it matter?

If we’re made of "matter", does that mean we matter? Doesn’t it matter? Why do I insist it doesn’t matter?

I think so often I believe that the things which bring me joy don’t have meaning or purpose, but what if instead of being annoyed and frustrated by the inner expressions because they aren't "useful", I listened? What if instead of extinguishing the ingenuitive parts that don’t fit I realize it’s my soul trying to tell me something meaningful, trying to speak to mankind through one little flawed vehicle?

But what if that vehicle is so busy trying to be a butterfly, or an astronaut, or a therapist that it doesn’t even realize that the meaning and purpose of their life is already within, waiting to speak? And in fear, for to be actually realized was the struggle in the first place. 

What if being something great was the missed (or was it "misunderstood"?) opportunity of the century because it was actually about discovering that I was something great all along?

What if in the very deepest places we’re really all the same and have needs for connection and love and relationships regardless of the packaging, and what if the desperate development of the talents we so worship was another way for people to fall into the trap of thinking we had to earn love and worthiness, instead of discovering it within us? What if we got that wrong? 

Would it change the kinds of discoveries and advancements of humanity if we filled the holes in our souls which cause us the emotional pain we're trying to obscure with acclaim? Is true discovery even about earning acclaim, or is there a God reaching down and, like a dove, touching our minds with insight because of the other parts of our desires— the desire for the blessing of humanity— for searching. What if we get this wrong? And what if we don’t listen when that voice speaks to us?

But what would happen if we did?