Children are much more grounded than adults. They are seeing everything for the first time, so they’ve yet to grow aloof to the wonders of reality.
When an elephant emerges from the jungle, a child will leap in excitement as if they had seen a three-headed unicorn…as it just as well should have been a three-headed unicorn. Children live in awe of such wondrous creatures. We adults say, “ho-hum, I’ve seen it before.”
We seem only to wonder at new things, not miraculous things.
The skeptics say they want to see miracles, but what they really want is something new. They’ve grown blind to the ordinary miracles of this extraordinary life.
We search ceaselessly for ways to be shocked or surprised, and have grown bored by the everyday. We’ve gotten to where it’s not enough to see amazing things, they must be fresh and new, too.
It’s why you’re more likely to read 10 minutes of a sensational gossip story today than you are to read 2 minutes of a classic book. Or why you’re more likely to spend an hour watching the “news” tonight than you are to spend 5 minutes pondering the infiniteness contained within the person sitting next to you.
We are mesmerized by the new. Yet the best things in life don’t always feel new — and so the danger is that we eventually look past them and take them for granted. But all things are new and wondrous to a child. This is one way we must be more like children — never losing our sense of wonder at the world around us.
“Reality is a magical place. If you are not in awe of it, you can be sure you’ve lost touch with it. And touching it is only a beginning to actually grasping it.” – G.K. Chesterton, Everlasting Man
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