I am easily distracted, easily convinced and easily bored.
If you’re like me, you become obsessed with some idea or concept quickly and learn all there is to learn about it and then you move on. It is a pattern that I have repeated many times, but for the first time I feel like I have found something that could hold my interest and never cease to keep amazing me.
To borrow a phrase from one of my favorite writers, Jedidiah Jenkins, it’s the Pursuit of Wonder.
This sounds like a giant, slightly new-age topic but it’s really not that difficult to grasp; far harder than actually doing it. Jedidiah ventures that as we get older, our brains have gone stagnant. We have settled into a routine and nothing is new anymore. As children, everything is new and everything is alive, fascinating and exciting. That slows and even stops as adults. We become adjusted and our brains stop expanding or, at least, fail to expand at the rate at which they did when we were newcomers in the world. There is probably a scientific study out there somewhere that biologically disproves this, but all I know is how I feel when I read Jedidiah’s theory; a feeling of utter agreement.
I am dumbfounded because I can so clearly feel this phenomenon at work in my own mind. My mind has stopped stretching. The world has lost its wonder.
Understanding the need to pursue wonder and expand our minds is one thing. Actually acting upon it is consistently another. Choosing to pursue wonder, every day and every moment, is a daunting task that I certainly don’t successfully do 100% of the time. I spent most of my teenage years completely saturated with the same channels of information, the same sources of inspiration and the same mindless routine. I didn’t know anything about the world or what I was doing in it and I thought that was okay.
I was bored without even knowing I was bored. When I first read about the idea of pursuing wonder on Jedidiah’s Instagram, I was fascinated but at a loss for where to start. As I read more into the topic, I found several things that helped me learn to pursue wonder and make everyday brand new and wondrous:
- Read news sources that lean more towards the opposite of what you believe. You’ll discover a whole new perspective on things, even if you don’t necessarily agree.
- Engage in an art form- writing, painting, dancing, singing, playing an instrument, photography or any others- that you haven’t done before. You might be horrible at it- keep doing it. Do it horribly, and in that way you will be doing it well.
- Journal. Even if it’s just your name written in different fancy ways, that will give way to more.
- Sleep outside. Don’t make it comfortable. Just lie down.
- Listen to music that you have professed to hate. (And then listen to music you love.)
- Have a conversation with someone that doesn’t involve anything to do with physical looks, someone other than the two of you, work or school. See what you learn. Fight the awkwardness.
- Finally, and this is most important, do something that radically and fundamentally scares you. Something that will shake you to your core and something that you know will not leave you where it found you. At least make a plan to do this. For Jedidiah, this was riding his bike 7,000 miles from Oregon to Patagonia. Personally, I plan to move to Nepal for at least a year, shave my head and reside in a guest monastery. This sounds crazy and it IS crazy but that’s what makes it scary and so full of wonder.
This isn’t some plea from a college hippie to change your whole life.
Small changes can be all it takes. It’s just so easy to get stuck in a life that we don’t even realize we’re stuck in until it’s too late. I want this generation to be the most enlightened, wonder-seeking people in the world because it is only by understanding and engaging in it that we can change it.
Join me and Jedidiah Jenkins in the pursuit of wonder.
For more information (and a much better explanation of this idea), check out the video made about Jedidiah's bike trip:
