Wonder

We recently took the little munchkin on his first trip out of state, to visit his grandparents and great-grandparents. Before we left, my mother called me, concerned that she didn’t have the plethora of toys, books, bouncers, play mats, and other assorted baby-entertainment items that we use on a daily basis. She was worried that while we stayed at her house, the baby would have nothing to play with.

I assured her that this was not a problem. Right now, everything in the world is new and exciting to my baby boy. He is fascinated by bright lights, color contrast, and anything that makes noise. This means that on most days, the lamp in the playroom is more interesting to him than I am. And if there is sun shining in through a window, I have pretty stiff competition for my son’s attention. He is so bright-eyed and alert, taking in colors and shapes and activities in the room that I don’t notice because I have seen them hundreds of times and they have become painfully banal.

This made me think about routine. I definitely consider myself a creature of habit. I love having a predictable daily schedule and planning my weeks in advance. It would take about a month before I grew tired of eating the same thing for lunch every day. Though dull, I generally don’t consider this a bad thing. However, I realized that in my complacent day-to-day routine, I have stopped seeing the wonder in the world. I’m not sure when this happened exactly. Somewhere between the ages of six and twenty-six, I started looking at the world as an adult. I rarely hear a new word, or see a new object, or do a new activity. I look at the same furniture in the same rooms, the same trees and cars outside, the same faces, without actually seeing them. My brain knows what is there, and it skips on to the next thought.

A few years ago, the Washington Post published an article on a social experiment, wherein a world-class violinist played Beethoven on a three million dollar violin in a Metro station in Washington DC. The busy adult commuters hearing the music generally breezed past him, with only a few people stopping briefly to listen. However, most of the children who passed dragged their feet and turned their heads, straining to hear the violin music as their schedule-driven parents tugged them along. The adults hurried past, hearing without hearing the amazing beauty in front of them. I would like to think I would recognize such an amazing talent and performance if I heard it on the street, but more likely I would be one of the adults scurrying along, oblivious.

Thus, it was wonderful to take my baby to my hometown, and watch him experience my home state for the first time. He was too young to understand what he was seeing, but he did know that everything was fresh and exciting and new. This time, I tried to stop and appreciate my home, my parents, my city, my friends, just as my son did. I listened to the music, I tasted the foods, I walked around my old neighborhood, really experiencing each without permitting my task-master brain to rush on to the next obligation or concern. It wasn’t easy.

It’s tough to detach from the day-to-day requirements of adulthood, but every once in a while, it is good to hit pause and look around with fresh eyes and appreciate the wonder.