The human mind craves order and certainty, so it often categorizes the miracles of life as mundane. Predictability offers safety.
How We Turn the Magical Into the Mundane
The world is a place of wonder.A child’s first glimpse of a bunny, dandelion, or rainbow brings magical delight.
Even as adults, we can be filled with wonder. When we travel to a new place, we find wonder in the landscape, architecture, art, and creativity of the people in that area, which lights us up.
So why don’t we feel such awe every waking day? It’s safer to see things as ordinary, dull, and boring. Our innate self-preservation says, “I am familiar with this; it’s no longer unknown to me.”
As we become familiar with the world around us, we turn off our curiosity and lose the ability to see things as unique.
How to See Things Fresh Again
Try to see things with a “beginner’s mind”—as if seeing things for the first time. See people you pass on the street with fresh eyes and wonder what they’re like.When you walk around your house, notice things like you’ve never encountered such magical objects.
When you go outside, imagine it as the first time you’ve seen a tree, a cloud, or a car. What magical things!
When you do a video call, message someone, or see a social media video online, imagine how your great-grandparents would have been awestruck by such magic!
When you’re flying in the sky or traveling in a vehicle that goes faster than the fastest animal, can you realize the miracle of that?
Practice Becoming Enchanted
Notice how ordinary you find everything and assume you know something and how that affects you each day. Then, set a reminder to practice seeing things with wonder. Practice experiencing things as if for the first time. Taste your food as if it were the first time you’d ever tasted food! Can you fall in love with life and recapture a sense of magic and wonder? Can you feel a sense of the enchanted all around you?It’s there, waiting for you to see it.
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