I wonder
There was a certain sense of timelessness I experienced in childhood that I have been trying to find my way back to ever since. I understand now that there’s a psychological explanation as to why we experience time differently as children than we do as adults. The brass tacks version of that concept is that time moves more slowly for children because they (we) are experiencing everything for the first time, and thus are filled with a sense of wonder that seemingly pumps the brakes on their (our) surroundings. That feeling of wonder lessens as we get older because we become more accustomed to things—because we build general lives, and schedules, and routines, filled with what we already know and are comfortable with, therefore swallowing up the amount of time we spend discovering new things and letting ourselves be in awe of them.
I have been consciously in pursuit of this sense of awe for years now. It started as most things do: As a soft, steady second pulse, beating underneath the mundane one that exists on its own to keep me alive. That pulse periodically grew and heightened until it became as unavoidable as a migraine. It thrummed under my skin, behind my eyes, in the hollow curve of sinew between my ear and neck, until I could no longer ignore it. I was so sick of feeling like my life was passing me by in 24-hour bursts that seemed like they actually happened in a fraction of that time. I wanted, desperately, to slow down and to be slowed in the process. But how? I shifted pieces of the puzzle into place, only to find that they weren’t a perfect match. What appeared to be cohesion on the surface was actually marred by a small corner of cardboard that didn’t slot completely into the one I had placed beside it. I’d pull them apart, hands shaking, and try to figure out how to start again.
Figuring out how to start again wasn’t something I learned through any sort of sustained effort or coaching. I would increase or decrease certain things depending on how they made me feel and the general impact they had on me. Being on my phone for more than four hours a day made me feel like I was being sucked into a vortex of timelessness that was draining, not rewarding. So I dialed back the time I spent looking at my phone and felt better, only to have that block replaced by time spent looking at my laptop while I worked for eight hours a day or more, depending on what was needed of me. That clicked me back into feeling like time was passing too quickly. Or, more accurately, like I was passing through time itself, a specter in my own life, and not even the type I would welcome being as someone who has always had a lifelong love for the supernatural.
It was this constant, sustained dial shift that often made me feel like a bank robber repeatedly trying, and failing, to listen for the faint click of confirmation signaling the correct sequence of numbers that would finally open a treasured vault. Sometimes I’d land on the right number by pure happenstance, only to discover that I couldn’t line up the next one no matter how hard I strained to hear it. Until, one day, I figured that I was going about it the wrong way. I was trying to recapture something I had experienced as a child through the jaded eyes of an adult. I would never be able to find my way back to that version of myself if I didn’t try to see the world through her eyes instead of my own.
I started off with small things—anything, really, that made me feel like a momentary flap of hummingbird wings suspended midair in a slow motion video. I would stop and smell flowers I came across on my walks, or stand still in a field and watch the birds swoop and dive and fly overhead, speaking in a language I could mimic but never understand. I checked my phone less and stared out the window more. I let myself feel a sense of childlike wonder over every single thing I experienced—big and small—and repeatedly stamped down and breathed through any sense of embarrassment I felt as I did so. Who cares, really, if I spend the afternoon whistling at a murder of crows in the graveyard? Or if I’m staring slack jawed through the windshield as I peer up at the Zakim Bridge for the 10,000th time? I wanted to feel wonder before then and didn’t, but not because there wasn’t wonder to experience. I hadn’t felt it as often before that mindset shift because I didn’t let myself feel it. Once I did, a rush of awe flooded in and slowed the hands of time down with it.
When I was in Michigan one summer, I saw fireflies for the first time hovering above the grass, and sat quietly with a loved one while she held a small toad in her hands, letting me observe it with wide-eyed amazement because I had never seen one in person before. On countless evenings that same summer, I would lie down on my bedroom floor and stare at the ceiling while I looped the same song over and over, and let myself daydream. I have tried my best, every day since then, to just leave myself alone and let myself be. To let myself hold my breath and watch three baby bunnies nestled safely together in my mom’s garden, and be reminded that we are only here, really, for the briefest moment of time, so I should appreciate that moment for however long it is destined to stretch out before me.
Despite this reckoning, I don’t always get the balance right. There are still days that pass by in the blink of an eye, and others that stretch on endlessly in both good and bad ways, depending on how I’m feeling. No matter which way the pendulum swings, though, I always try to carve out moments of wonder where I am doing, or hearing, or watching, or reading something new and letting myself be bowled over by it. There was a day, recently, when I was listening to Jensen McRae’s new album on my walk and I came across a small stream I had never seen before. Her voice was the perfect background melody to my surroundings, and I stopped, and stared into the stream, and felt the breeze shift through the trees, and was as close as I had ever been to weeping. I was just so glad and grateful in that moment to be alive in a perfect snapshot of time, and gladder still that I had been laying the foundation for wonder that permitted me to experience it as slowly as if I was feeling all of those things for the first time.
I think the main lesson I have learned through this journey to find my way back to the sense of timelessness I experienced as a child is this: As we get older, we will see fewer and fewer things for the first time, and we are always on the precipice of seeing something for the last time without realizing it. Why, then, wouldn’t we choose to look at everything with those same old (new) eyes that we did when we were kids? Why wouldn’t we just let ourselves experience a constant stream of awe and wonder at everything, no matter how big or small it is?
When asked in an interview why she used her good silver every day, Joan Didion replied, “Well, every day is all there is.” Every day is all there is. So, why wouldn’t we just experience the one before us as if that’s all we’re going to get?
