Surprise yourself!

<<Wonder is the first of all the passions>>

(René Descartes)

<<Curiosity [...] is appetite of knowledge>>

(Thomas Hobbes)

<<Wonder implies the desire to learn>>

(Aristotle) 

 

When something new happens to me, or when I get to know new things I always feel happy, because the most beautiful sensation I can feel is when I am surprised.

I think I can be considered a rational person, who uses logic to understand a great part of the events I partecipate in or the stories people tell me to listen to my point of view.

Logic is useful, but it's important to be wrong sometimes, especially because the unexpected is much more interesting: "in medio stat virtus" ("virtue is in the middle", Aristotle), we have to be both logic and dreamers.

Without wonderment, life can be very boring and plain: what would be missing would be the desire to know, to understand, to interpret reality, that heat which grows inside ourselves and makes our eyes glisten.

The first step is to be interested in something: if you aren't, you can't experience wonderment. For example, I love the paintings of Kandinskij, even if I usually prefer realistic paintings. When I saw them for the first time, I felt astonished because I could see the same balance and power of other artworks based on reality. So I started to look for more informations and I learnt a lot of things I ignored before.

Then you have to accept the surprise, abandoning your beliefs for a while and your usual path as you are looking at things for the first time. You know the sky is full of stars, but it's wonderful when you are walking in the countryside and you see them lighting up the darkness of night. The fact is that we are used to take a lot of things for granted and this won't let us change our way of seeing the world.

Wonderment is also connected with the sublime, which can display itself in different forms, as in the limitless strength of nature. It is everything which makes you think, the first impulse which can generate a new way of facing life.


Bye for now


Yours, Silvia