I remember many, many times throughout my career where I lamented that education takes the “childlike sense of wonder about the world around them” away from students. And it is true…for most, it does. Learning becomes something students tolerate at best. Most of my years in education have revolved around trying to get educators to understand the necessity of wonder. That’s where the real learning happens. The powerful educators acknowledge and embrace it. The educators that do not have a catastrophic impact on their students.
Being a father of a 4 and 2 year old, I live it every day. My son wonders about everything. Everything. His most commonly used word is “why.” I am grateful he is this way and it will probably haunt me to no end if he ever stops wondering. He is how we all should be. Everything in his world matters. It all has value and deserves an explanation. We are all One and he knows that, because life has yet to mislead him.
Up until now, I have always equated this concept with learning. It is natural, as I have devoted my 23 year career almost entirely to education and it was a fundamental part of how I coached, mentored and trained others. It was in perfect alignment with my steadfast belief that the quality and depth of what a student learned was far more important than simply producing. That the beauty of mathematics was in the journey of the thinking, not the arrival at the answer.
As e.e. cummings said:
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.
This concept goes far beyond education. That “childlike sense of wonder” applies to how we live our lives and how we have misplaced our Spirit. As adults strive for the answer and dismiss the more beautiful question, if we even recognize it at all.
We are born without limitation and in those early years see the true world. We are born in and of the Light. As time passes and fear gets a hold of us, that Light slowly becomes hidden. As we age, we believe we are growing through learning and experiencing the world around us. The opposite is the truth. For every perceived step forward in the world we see, we take step away from our Self and the world we belong in. The world around us is simply an illusion and yet we continue to dive headlong into it, pursuing nothing.
Living with a “childlike sense of wonder” is to recapture the time when we were closest to our Self. When we lived without limits, because we didn’t stop to question the infinite within. When we were pure love, time didn’t matter, death was not something we knew or feared.
It is when you realize you are nothing but love, now is all that matters and you are forevermore that you will once again live and wonder, as you did when you were a child.