It is a curious thing that in an age when men have discovered how to fly through the air like birds and speak across oceans as if they were whispering in their neighbor's ear, they should have forgotten how to stand still and gape at a daisy. We have become so terribly practical that we have forgotten the practical value of being impractical. In our haste to explain everything, we have explained away the one thing truly worth explaining: our capacity for wonder.
The modern man, that paragon of progress and efficiency, has convinced himself that he has outgrown wonder. He believes it to be a childish thing, like a toy soldier or a wooden hoop, to be put away with other childish things. But in this, as in many things, the modern man is monumentally mistaken. For wonder is not the toy soldier of the mind, but its commander-in-chief.
Consider the paradox: we live in an age of marvels, yet we have forgotten how to marvel. We carry in our pockets devices that would have seemed like magic to our grandfathers, yet we grumble when they take more than a moment to show us a cat playing a piano. We have mapped the human genome and peered into the depths of space, yet we have lost the ability to be astonished by a sunset or perplexed by a pebble.
The very men who tell us that wonder is unnecessary are the same men who, in another breath, lament the lack of creativity and innovation in our time. They fail to see that creativity is nothing more than wonder with its sleeves rolled up. The scientist who unravels the mysteries of the atom and the child who blows bubbles in the garden are engaged in the same fundamental activity: they are wondering at the world.
There are those who say that knowledge has killed wonder, that in knowing how the rainbow is formed or why the apple falls, we have lost the ability to be amazed by them. This is akin to saying that by learning the steps of a dance, we have lost the ability to dance with joy. Knowledge does not kill wonder; it is the kindling that feeds its flame.
The tragedy of our time is not that we know too much, but that we wonder too little. We have mistaken information for understanding, and in doing so, we have traded the vast, uncharted oceans of mystery for the shallow, stagnant pools of fact.
To reclaim our sense of wonder, we need not embark on grand adventures or scale distant mountains. We need only to open our eyes and see the world as if for the first time. To look at the familiar until it becomes strange, and the strange until it becomes familiar.
For in the end, the most practical thing a man can do is to stand, mouth agape, marveling at the sheer improbability of existence. It is the most unnecessary of all things, and therefore the most essential.
For it is only when we remember how to wonder that we will remember how to live.