wondermentality.
I'm participating in a 31-day blogging challenge called reverb10, responding to writing prompts that are designed to elicit reflections on 2010, and hopes for 2011. You can find out more about it here. I am challenging myself to respond to each prompt in 15 minutes or less.
Today's challenge: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
Wondermentality.
Where do clouds go? asks Tess.
Do you see the cloud bones? she asks.
Is that a cloud factory? I hear from the back seat.
Do cat spines continue into their tails? she asks.
Where would we be if the world was uninvented? she ponders.
What would happen if rain fell up?
What would happen if nothing was small?
What would happen if there were no bones in my arms?
I WROTE A BOOK, she screams, handing me a few papers stapled together.
I'M MAKING A MOVIE! she exclaims.
I AM AWESOME! she declares.
Wonder belongs to children. We lose it as we age, afraid of showing it for fear we will be seen as unsophisticated and naive.
I have cultivated wonder this year by inhabiting Tess, as much as is possible. By listening to her questions, and by watching her arm move effortlessly into creating art, not plotting and planning but doing, broad strokes of bold color. By telling her "little girl" stories at bedtime in which the little girl is never named but we both know it is Tess herself, facing the same challenges Tess is facing–and triumphing. By starting to paint again myself. By focusing on my senses, moving beyond my head and into my body. By asking more questions, and stopping to listen to the answers. By inviting Tess to teach me.
By investing in a new kind of seeing, a new kind of mindset, a childlike one, a questioning and unknowing one, a wondermentality.
