---
title: '#reverb10, Day 4: Wonder'
date: '2010-12-04T07:36:37-05:00'
permalink: /reverb10-day-4-wonder/
tags:
    - '#reverb10'
    - reflecting
---

Today’s prompt:

> Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

Okay, we’ve officially hit the point at which I start complaining about the awful *gooshiness* of these prompts. A sense of wonder? *Really?*

I do not think I have a sense of wonder, at least not in the starry-eyed sense in which I cannot help but read that phrase. It’s possible that there’s something antithetical to that kind of gawping amazement built into academic life. When confronted with surprise, a scholar will tend to speed right past wonder to analysis: What does it mean? Why did it happen? How should I understand this?

I refuse to think that’s a bad thing. In fact, the beauty part of the academic life may lie in that conversion of slack-jawed wonder into more focused *wondering*, pressing beyond the mystery to the questions it provokes. That doesn’t mean that we lose the “wow!” aspect of wonder, only that the exclamation point is replaced by a colon, and more thought ensues.

So, what am I doing to cultivate a sense of *wondering* in my life? I’m working really hard on trying not to have all the answers in my writing and research, but instead to remain open to new questions, so that I don’t miss the moment of surprise that might lead me in a new direction.