What We Mean By Wonder
THE ART OF EXPERIENCING MYSTERY
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science - Albert Einstein.
School of Wonder’s mission is to foster the inner wonder of the children. What we mean is to foster the inner ability to acknowledge and appreciate the marvelous things all around us.
Wonder is a mechanism, inside ourselves, that keeps us seeing a way
in the midst of turbulence and uncertainty reigning today.
Combining imagination and hope, the wonder machine is on.
Forget about the swimming pool with the pink unicorn,
We are going beyond perfect imaginary worlds.
Wonder is in the mystery of the dream, unresolved.
When the challenge has no solution yet,
and the path to our mission is still unclear and scary.
The exact moment when humans let their curiosity be,
a tiny fairy full of light who starts dancing free
soon transforming each step into a very real thing.
- MPB
Here, Wonder is not about escaping to imaginary worlds.
We call Wonder the inner ability to keep our curiosity alive and in service of expanding our wisdom and choices.
Illustrations by our Wonder Magician Hana Hwang.
Wonder is a very slippery concept to define. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a feeling of amazement and admiration, caused by something beautiful, remarkable, or unfamiliar”. In this sense, it is very similar to awe, as well as to the Spanish word “asombro” . These concepts refer to the emotional state of surprise in which an eye-opening moment takes place, and a new piece of knowledge is discovered. But further than an emotional state, wonder is the ability to enter into that space of mystery, the key element of any discovery.
Saint Thomas Aquinas defined wonder as the desire for knowledge (“El asombro es el deseo para el conocimiento” ).
It’s interesting that the Oxford Dictionary has the same definition for the word curiosity (“a strong desire to know or learn something”). Could wonder and curiosity be synonyms? Both of them seek to explore the mysterious; however, while curiosity comes as a suggestion or temptation to explore a mystery, wonder appears as the capacity to act and apprehend that mystery with trust.
If curiosity and wonder were two friends exploring in Nature, I imagine Curiosity as the cheeky fairy who asks “What’s in that hole?” and Wonder as the brave and innocent one who puts their head into the hole to see what’s there. Although we often use them as synonyms, wonder contains an extra element of trust, hope, and optimism that makes curiosity actionable.
The term wonder comes from the German word Wunder, that means “of unknown ultimate origin”. This definition brings a fundamental element of wonder: the easiness and familiarity with the unknown, as if it was already known. This ability is fundamental to keep alive: fostering wonder goes far beyond fostering curiosity. It also implies learning to reconnect with our inner trust that makes us comfortable and ready to navigate the unknown - learning to listen to our inner wisdom that, mysteriously, is already known.
Fostering this sense of wonder is at the heart of all of our programs. Check out our calendar to see when you can join the next adventure!
If you want to learn more about the theory behind the wonder, we recommend to explore the excellent research work by Catherine L’Ecuyer, especially her book The Wonder Approach, recently published in English.