How I Wonder

To Integrate or To Avoid

I’ve been paying attention to how I wonder.

Not just that I do.
But how.

For a long time, I didn’t think I had much access to it.

Wonder felt distant.
Something I used to have, not something I lived with.

But lately, it’s been returning. Quietly.
Not as excitement.
Not as escape.

But as a kind of openness
that doesn’t need to resolve everything.

And as it’s come back,
I’ve started to notice something else.

Not all wonder is the same.
Some of it feels grounded.

It can sit with complexity.
It doesn’t rush to explain.
It doesn’t need things to be easy to stay open.

And some of it feels… lighter.
But not in a way that deepens anything.

More like nothing is being asked of it.

I’m beginning to see that wonder can move in two directions.

Wonder as escape.
Wonder as encounter.

Escape keeps things open
by never letting anything land.

It stays curious,
but never committed.

It feels free,
but never responsible.

Encounter moves differently.

It stays open
and lets things touch it.

It allows experience to arrive
without needing to control it.

From the outside,
they can look almost identical.

Both are open.
Both are questioning.
Both resist closure.

But one is keeping a distance.
The other is willing to be changed.

I can feel the difference now.
In myself.
In the spaces I move through.

There are moments where I catch myself
using wonder to stay just above something.

To keep it interesting
without letting it move through me.

And there are moments
where wonder asks something else.

To stay.
To feel.
To let what I’m seeing
actually reach me.

That kind of wonder isn’t as easy.
But it’s real.

I think this is what I’m learning.
Not just how to wonder again.

But how to recognize
when it’s helping me avoid my life—

and when it’s inviting me into it.

Because I don’t want a wonder
that keeps me at a distance.

I want a wonder
that lets me meet life—
and be met by it.