trees

                  Sometimes I think we are losing our wonder about life. You know, the moments when you are sitting and wondering about how far we are from the stars and the moon? Why huge, murky gray waves arrive in a bluster of wind and churning sea only to return gliding to the sandy shore in a whipped froth of white foam. Pausing breathlessly as it surges once again swirling, ebbing and building into a another magnificent wave in all its thrashing, crashing, splashing glory. 

                   We don’t wonder about these things anymore because, as my ten-year old son put it, “I don’t have to wonder about stuff, Mom. I can Goggle it.” Right… we can Goggle it, instant gratification, no wonder or imagination necessary. No pondering or mulling it around in your mind like the lyrics to a song you are trying to remember.  Just go to your computer and Voila!

                   Life is a mystery filled with wonder, and magic. A mystifying journey, the discovery of life. Googling information about our perplexing planet and the deeper questions that emerge as we grow, is more about reading the brief  synopsis or “facts” about a subject without ever having really experienced the subject first hand. Even worse, recitation of facts becomes the norm and actually having the experience or knowing someone who had a life changing experience, well that’s Passe. We can just read someone else’s words, opinions or facts about any given topic and, BAM!!! Now we too have knowledge about any subject, but not the feeling, not the experience.

                    Is the recitation of knowledge, the hearsay of information better than wonder, adventure or imagination? Aren’t there some things that are unknowable and that adds to the mystery of our existence? Some experiences that you simply must have rather than reading Wikipedia’s definition of joy, happiness, miracles, or love.? Aren’t there just some things in life that simply must be lived in your heart and imagination?

                   Like walking in the woods on a fall day with the leaves sprinkling the forest  in a blaze of golden hues. Maybe stopping for a moment to listen to the stream sweeping the leaves blissfully downwards to the end. Where do the leaves go? What happens when the earth sleeps and hibernates for the winter? What happens when we float down the stream to the end?

                 All questions that take a life time to experience, share and live. The unknowable is what makes our mystical, perplexing, frustrating, mercurial, and extraordinary Universe so magical.  It’s what makes us continue to stare up at the sky and wonder about the moon, the planets, the stars, and the people who have gone and left us behind. It’s what keeps us seeking, searching and asking the age-old question? Why am we here? An existential quest for answers you just won’t find on Google or Wikipedia just in the magic and wonder of our own lives.